“The Roknari reported he’d died,” replied the chancellor shortly. “They’d hid him for revenge, I’d assumed, when I learned he yet lived. Though if the silk merchant spoke truth, maybe it was for embarrassment. He must have escaped them, and knocked about Ibra for a time, until his, um, unhappy arrest.” He glanced at Cazaril, and away.

You know you lie. I know you lie. But dy Jironal did not, even now, know for certain if Cazaril knew he lied. It didn’t seem much of an advantage. This was a weak moment for a countercharge. This slander already half cut the ground from under his feet, regardless of the outcome of Orico’s inquiry.

“Well, I do not understand how his loss was allowed to pass without investigation,” said dy Sanda, staring narrowly at dy Jironal. “He was the fortress’s commander.”

Iselle put in thoughtfully, “If you assumed revenge, you must have judged he’d cost the Roknari dearly in the field, for them to use him so thereafter.”

Dy Jironal grimaced, clearly misliking where this line of logic was leading. He sat back and waved away the digression. “We are come to an impasse, then. A man’s word against a man’s word, and nothing to decide it. Sire, I earnestly advise prudence. Let my lord dy Cazaril be given some lesser post or sent back to the Dowager of Baocia.”

Iselle nearly sputtered. “And let the slander go unchallenged? No! I will not stand for it.”

Orico rubbed his head, as if it ached, and shot side glances at his chilly chief advisor and his furious half sister. He vented a small groan. “Oh, gods, I hate this sort of thing . . .” His expression changed, and he sat upright again. “Ah! But of course. There is just the solution . . . just the just solution, heh, heh . . .” He beckoned to the page who had summoned Cazaril, and murmured in his ear. Dy Jironal watched, frowning, but apparently could not make out what had been said either. The page scampered out.

“What is your solution, sire?” asked dy Jironal apprehensively.

“Not my solution. The gods. We will let the gods decide who is innocent, and who lies.”

“You’re not thinking of putting this to trial by combat, are you?” asked dy Jironal in a voice of real horror.

Cazaril could only share that horror—and so did Ser dy Maroc, judging by the way the blood drained from his face.

Orico blinked. “Well, now, there’s another thought.” He glanced at dy Maroc and at Cazaril. “They appear evenly matched, withal. Dy Maroc is younger, of course, and does very well on the sand of my practice ring, but experience counts for something.”

Lady Betriz glanced at dy Maroc and frowned in sudden worry. So did Cazaril, for the opposite reason, he suspected. Dy Maroc was indeed a very pretty duello dancer. Against the brutality of the battlefield, he would last, Cazaril calculated, maybe five minutes. Dy Jironal met Cazaril’s eyes directly for almost the first time in this inquiry, and Cazaril knew he was making the identical calculation. Cazaril’s stomach heaved at the thought of being forced to butcher the boy, even if he was a tool and a liar.

“I do not know if the Ibran lied or not,” put in dy Maroc warily. “I only know what I heard.”

“Yes, yes.” Orico waved this away. “I think my plan will be better.” He sniffed, rubbed his nose on his sleeve, and waited. A lengthy and unnerving silence fell.

It was broken when the page returned, announcing, “Umegat, sire.”

The dapper Roknari groom entered and glanced in faint surprise at the people assembled, but trod directly to his master and made his bow. “How may I serve you, my lord?”

“Umegat,” said Orico. “I want you to go outside and catch the first sacred crow you see, and bring it back in here. You”—he gestured at the page—“go with him for witness. Hurry, now, quick quick.” Orico clapped his hands in his urgency.

Without evincing the least surprise or question, Umegat bowed again and padded back out. Cazaril caught dy Maroc giving the chancellor a piteous Now what? look; dy Jironal set his teeth and ignored it.

“Now,” said Orico, “how shall we arrange this? I know—Cazaril, you go stand in one end of the room. Dy Maroc, you go stand in the other.”

Dy Jironal’s eyes shifted in uncertain calculation. He gave dy Maroc a slight nod, toward the end of the room with the open window. Cazaril found himself relegated to the dimmer, closed end.

“You all”—Orico gestured to Iselle and her cohort—“stand to the side, for witness. You and you and you too,” this to the guards and the remaining page. Orico heaved to his feet and went about the table to arrange his human tableau to his close satisfaction. Dy Jironal stayed seated where he was, playing with a quill and scowling.

In much less time than Cazaril would have expected, Umegat returned, with a cranky-looking crow tucked under his arm and the excited page bouncing around him.

“Was that the first crow you saw?” Orico asked the boy.

“Yes, my lord,” the page replied breathlessly. “Well, the whole flock was circling above Fonsa’s Tower, so I suppose we saw six or eight at once. So Umegat just stood in the courtyard with his arm out and his eyes closed, quite still. And this one came down to him and landed right on his sleeve!”

Cazaril’s eyes strained, trying to see if the muttering bird might, just possibly, be missing two tail feathers.

“Very good,” said Orico happily. “Now, Umegat, I want you to stand in the exact center of the room, and when I give the signal, release the sacred crow. We’ll see which man he flies to, and then we’ll know! Wait—everyone should say a prayer in their hearts first to the gods for guidance.”

Iselle composed herself, but Betriz looked up. “But sire. What shall we know? Is the crow to fly to the liar, or the honest man?” She stared hard at Umegat.

“Oh,” said Orico. “Hm.”

“And what if it just flies around in circles?” said dy Jironal, an exasperated edge leaking into his voice.

Then we’ll know the gods are as confused as all of the rest of us, Cazaril did not say out loud.

Umegat, stroking the bird to calm it, gave a slight bow. “As the truth is sacred to the gods, let the crow fly to the honest man, sire.” He did not glance at Cazaril.

“Oh, very good. Carry on, then.”

Umegat, with what Cazaril was beginning to suspect was a fine sense of theater, positioned himself precisely between the two accused men, and held the bird out on his arm, slowly removing his controlling hand. He stood a moment with a look of pious quietude on his face. Cazaril wondered what the gods made of the cacophony of conflicting prayers no doubt arising from this room at this instant. Then Umegat tossed the crow into the air, and let his arms hang down. It squawked and spread its wings, and fanned a tail missing two feathers.

Dy Maroc held his arms widespread, hopefully, looking as if he wondered if he was allowed to tackle the creature out of the air as it swooped by him. Cazaril, about to cry Caz, Caz to be safe, was suddenly overcome with theological curiosity. He already knew the truth—what else might this test reveal? He stood still and straight, lips parted, and watched in disturbed fascination as the crow ignored the open window and flapped straight to his shoulder.

“Well,” he said quietly to it, as it dug in its claws and shifted from side to side. “Well.” It tilted its black beak, regarding him with expressionless, beady eyes.

Iselle and Betriz jumped up and down and whooped, hugging each other and nearly frightening the bird off again. Dy Sanda smiled grimly. Dy Jironal gritted his teeth; dy Maroc looked faintly appalled.

Orico dusted his plump hands. “Good. That settles that. Now, by the gods, I want my dinner.”

ISELLE, BETRIZ, AND DY SANDA SURROUNDED CAZARIL like an honor guard and marched him out of Ias’s Tower to the courtyard.

“How did you know to come to my rescue?” Cazaril asked them. Surreptitiously, he glanced up; no crows were circling, just now.

“I had it from a page that you were to be arrested this morning,” said dy Sanda, “and I went at once to the royesse.”

Cazaril wondered if dy Sanda, like himself, kept a private budget to pay for early news from various observers around the Zangre. And why his own arrangements hadn’t worked a trifle better in this case. “I thank you, for covering my”—he swallowed the word, back—“blind side. I should have been dismissed by now, if you all hadn’t come to stand up for me.”

“No thanks needed,” said dy Sanda. “I believe you’d have done as much for me.”

“My brother needed someone to prop him,” said Iselle a trifle bitterly. “Else he bows to whatever force blows most proximately.”

Cazaril was torn between commending her shrewdness and suppressing her frankness. He glanced at dy Sanda. “How long—do you know—has this story about me been circulating in the court?”

He shrugged. “Some four or five days, I think.”

“This was the first we heard of it!” said Betriz indignantly.

Dy Sanda opened his hands in apology. “Likely it seemed too raw a thing to pour in your maiden ears, my lady.”

Iselle scowled. Dy Sanda accepted reiterated thanks from Cazaril and took his leave to check on Teidez.

Betriz, who had grown suddenly quiet, said in a stifled voice, “This was all my fault, wasn’t it? Dondo struck at you to avenge himself for the pig. Oh, Lord Caz, I’m sorry!”

“No, my lady,” said Cazaril firmly. “There is some old business between Dondo and me that goes back to before . . . before Gotorget.” Her face lightened, to his relief; nevertheless, he seized the chance to add prudently, “Grant you, the prank with the pig didn’t help, and you should not do anything like that again.”

Betriz sighed, but then smiled just a little bit. “Well, he did stop pressing himself upon me. So it helped that much.”

“I can’t deny that’s a benefit, but . . . Dondo remains a powerful man. I beg you—both—to take care to walk wide around him.”

Iselle’s eyes flicked toward him. She said quietly, “We’re under siege here, aren’t we. Me, Teidez, all our households.”

“I trust,” sighed Cazaril, “it is not quite so dire. Just go more carefully from now on, eh?”

He escorted them back to their chambers in the main block, but did not take up his calculations again. Instead, he strode back down the stairs and out past the stables to the menagerie. He found Umegat in the aviary, persuading the small birds to take dust baths in a basin of ashes as proof against lice. The neat Roknari, his tabard protected by an apron, looked up at him and smiled.

Cazaril did not smile back. “Umegat,” he began without preamble, “I have to know. Did you pick the crow, or did the crow pick you?”

“Does it matter to you, my lord?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

Cazaril’s mouth opened, and shut. He finally began again, almost pleadingly. “It was a trick, yes? You tricked them, by bringing the crow I feed at my window. The gods didn’t really reach into that room, right?”

Umegat’s brows rose. “The Bastard is the most subtle of the gods, my lord. Merely because something is a trick, is no guarantee you are not god-touched.” He added apologetically, “I’m afraid that’s just the way it works.” He chirped at the bright bird, apparently now done with its flutter in the ashes, coaxed it onto his hand with a seed drawn from his apron pocket, and popped it back into its nearby cage.

Cazaril followed, arguing, “It was the crow that I fed. Of course it flew to me. You feed it too, eh?”

“I feed all the sacred crows of Fonsa’s Tower. So do the pages and ladies, the visitors to the Zangre, and the acolytes and divines of all the Temple houses in town. The miracle of those crows is that they’re not all grown too fat to fly.” With a neat twist of his wrist, Umegat secured another bird and tipped it into the ash bath.

Cazaril stood back from him as ashes puffed, and frowned. “You’re Roknari. Aren’t you of the Quadrene faith?”

“No, my lord,” said Umegat serenely. “I’ve been a devout Quintarian since my late youth.”

“Did you convert when you came to Chalion?”

“No, when I was still in the Archipelago.”

“How . . . came it about that you were not hanged for heresy?”

“I made it to the ship to Brajar before they caught me.” Umegat’s smile crimped.

Indeed, he still had his thumbs. Cazaril’s brows drew down, as he studied the man’s fine-drawn features. “What was your father, in the Archipelago?”

“Narrow-minded. Very pious, though, in his foursquare way.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know, my lord. But he’s been dead these twenty years. It doesn’t matter anymore. I am content with what I am now.”

Cazaril scratched his beard, as Umegat traded for another bright bird. “How long have you been head groom of this menagerie, then?”

“From its beginning. About six years. I came with the leopard, and the first birds. We were a gift.”

“Who from?”

“Oh, from the archdivine of Cardegoss, and the Order of the Bastard. Upon the occasion of the roya’s birthday, you see. Many fine animals have been added, since then.”

Cazaril digested that, for a little. “This is a very unusual collection.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“How unusual?”

“Very unusual.”

“Can you tell me more?”

“I beg you will not ask me more, my lord.”

“Why not?”

“Because I do not wish to lie to you.”

“Why not?” Everyone else does.

Umegat drew in his breath and smiled crookedly, watching Cazaril. “Because, my lord, the crow picked me.”

Cazaril’s return smile grew a trifle strained. He gave Umegat a small bow and withdrew.

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.

Cazaril’s eyes pulled open against the glue that rimmed their lids. He stared up without comprehension at a ragged gray rift in the sky, framed in black. He licked crusted lips, and swallowed. He lay on his back on hard boards—the bracing frame inside Fonsa’s Tower. Recollection of the night came rushing back to him.

I live.

Therefore, I have failed.

His right hand, reaching blindly about him, encountered an inert little mound of cold feathers, and recoiled. He lay panting in remembered terror. A cramp gnawed his gut, a dull ache. He was shivering, damp, chilled through, as cold as any corpse. But not a corpse. He breathed. And so, likewise, must Dondo dy Jironal, on . . . was this his wedding morning?

As his eyes slowly adjusted, he saw he was not alone. Lined up along the crude rail that bounded the workmen’s platform, a dozen or more crows perched in the shadows, utterly silent, nearly still. They all seemed to be staring down at him.

Cazaril touched his face, but no wounds bled there—no bird had tried an experimental peck yet. “No,” he whispered shakily. “I am not your breakfast. I’m sorry.” One rustled its wings uneasily, but none of them flapped away at the sound of his voice. Even when he sat up, they shifted about but did not take to the air.

All was not drowned blackness since the night before—fragments of a dream coursed through his memory. He had dreamed that he was Dondo dy Jironal, roistering with his friends and their whores in some torchlit and candle-gilded hall, the board gleaming with silver goblets, his thick hands glittering with rings. He had toasted the blood-sacrifice of Iselle’s maidenhood with obscene jests, and drunk deeply . . . then he’d been taken with a cough, a scratching in his throat that needled rapidly to pain. His throat had swelled, closing shut, choking him, cutting off his air, as if he were being strangled from the inside out. The flushed faces of his companions had whirled about him, their laughter and derision turning to panic as it was forced upon them by his purpling livid features that he was not clowning. Cries, wine cups knocked over, shocked fearful hisses of Poison! No last words squeezed through that inward-strangled throat, past that thickening tongue. Just silent convulsions, laboring heart racing, viselike pain in the chest and head, black clouds shot with red boiling up in his darkening vision . . .

It was only a dream. If I live, so does he.

Cazaril lay back down upon the hard boards, curled around his bellyache, for half the turning of a glass, exhausted, despairing. The row of crows kept watch over him in unnerving silence. It gradually came to him that he would have to go back. And he hadn’t planned a return route.

He might climb down the bracing frames . . . but that would leave him standing in the bottom of a bricked-up tower atop a years-long accumulation of guano and detritus, crying to be let out. Could anyone even hear him through the thick stone? Would they take his muffled voice for an echo of the crows’ caws, or the howling of a ghost?

Up, then? Back the way he’d come in?

He stood at last, pulling himself up by the rail—even now, the crows did not fly away—and stretched his cramped and aching muscles. He had to physically shove a couple of crows from the railing to clear a place to stand; they flapped off indignantly, but still with that uncanny silence. He rucked up the brown gown, tucked hem in belt. When he balanced on the rail, it was a short reach to the tower’s rim. He grasped, heaved. His arms were strong, and his body was lean. One hideous moment of consciousness of the air below his bare kicking legs, and he was up over the stones and out onto the slates. The fog was so thick, he could barely see down into the courtyard below. Dawn, or just after dawn, he guessed; the lesser denizens of the castle would already be awake, this tag-end-of-autumn morning. The crows followed him solemnly, flapping up one by one through the gap in the roof to find perches on stone or slate. Their heads turned to track his progress.

He had a vision of them, mobbing him to spoil his next leap from the tower up to the main block, revenging their comrade. And then another vision, as his feet scrambled and his arms shook, of letting go, letting it all go, and falling to his welcome death on the stones below. A wrenching cramp coiled in his gut, driving out his breath in a gasp.

He would have let go then, except for the sudden terror that he might survive the fall, leg-smashed and crippled. Only that drove him up over the eaves to the slates of the main block’s roof. His muscles cracked as he lifted himself. His hands were scraped raw by their frantic gripping.

He was not sure, in this paling fog, which of the dozen dormer windows erupting out of the slates he’d emerged from last night. Suppose someone had come along and closed and locked it, since? He inched slowly along, trying each one. The crows followed, stalking along the gutters, flapping up in brief hops, their clawed feet slipping on the slates, too, at times. The mist beaded, glistening, on their feathers, and in his beard and hair, silver sequins on his black vest-cloak. The fourth casement window swung open to his scrabbling fingers. It was the unused lumber room. He slid through, and slammed it upon his black-liveried escort just in time to stop a couple of the birds from flying in after him. One bounced off the glass with a thud.

He crept down the stairs to his floor without encountering any early servants, stumbled into his chamber, and closed the door behind him. Tight-bladdered and cramping, he used his chamber pot; his bowels voided frightening blood clots. His hands trembled as he washed them in his basin. When he went to fling the bloodied wash water out into the ravine, the opening window dislodged two silent, sentinel crows from the stone sill. He closed it tight again and locked the latch.

He weaved to his bed like a man drunk on his feet, fell into it, and wrapped his coverlet around himself. As his shivering continued, he could hear the sounds of the castle’s servants carrying water or linens or pots, feet plodding up stairs and down corridors, an occasional low-voiced call or order.

Was Iselle being waked now, on the floor above, to be washed and attired, bound in ropes of pearls, chained in jewels, for her dreadful appointment with Dondo? Had she even slept? Or wept all night, prayed to gods gone deaf? He should go up, to offer what comfort he could. Had Betriz found another knife? I cannot bear to face them. He curled tighter and shut his eyes in agony.

He was still lying in bed, gasping in breaths perilously close to sobs, when booted steps sounded in the corridor, and his door banged open. Chancellor dy Jironal’s voice snarled, “I know it’s him. It has to be him!”

The steps stalked across his floorboards, and his coverlet was snatched from him. He rolled over and stared up in surprise at dy Jironal’s steel-bearded, panting face glaring down at him in astonishment.

“You’re alive!” cried dy Jironal. His voice was indignant.

Half a dozen courtiers, a couple of whom Cazaril recognized as Dondo’s bravos, crowded dy Jironal’s shoulder to gape at him. They had their hands upon their swords, as if prepared to correct this mistaken animation of Cazaril’s at dy Jironal’s word. Roya Orico, clad in a nightgown, a shabby old cloak clutched about his neck by his fat fingers, stood at the back of the mob. Orico looked . . . strange. Cazaril blinked, and rubbed his eyes. A kind of aura surrounded the roya, not of light, but of darkness. Cazaril could see him perfectly clearly, so he could not call it a cloud or a fog, for it obscured nothing. And yet it was there, moving as the man moved, like a trailing garment.

Dy Jironal bit his lip, his eyes boring into Cazaril’s face. “If not you—who, then? It has to be someone . . . it has to be someone close to . . . that girl! The foul little murderess!” He spun around and stormed out, curtly motioning his men to follow him.

“What’s afoot?” Cazaril demanded of Orico, who had turned to waddle after them.

Orico looked back over his shoulder, and spread his hands in a wide, bewildered shrug. “Wedding’s off. Dondo dy Jironal was murdered around midnight last night—by death magic.”

Cazaril’s mouth opened; nothing came out but a weak, “Oh.” He sank back, dazed, as Orico shuffled out after his chancellor.

I don’t understand.

If Dondo is slain, and yet I live . . . I cannot have been granted a death miracle. And yet Dondo is slain. How?

How else but that someone had beaten Cazaril to the deed?

Belatedly, his wits caught up with dy Jironal’s.

Betriz?

No, oh no . . . !

He surged out of bed, fell heavily to the floor, scrambled to his feet, and staggered after the crowd of enraged and baffled courtiers.

He arrived at his invaded office antechamber to hear dy Jironal bellowing, “Then bring her out, that I may see!” to a disheveled and frightened-looking Nan dy Vrit, who nevertheless blocked the doorway to the inner rooms with her body as though ready to defend a drawbridge. Cazaril nearly fainted with relief when Betriz, frowning fiercely, came up behind Nan’s shoulder. Nan was in her nightdress, but Betriz, rumpled and weary-looking, was still wearing the same green wool gown she’d had on last night. Had she slept? But she lives, she lives!

“Why do you make this uncouth roaring here, my lord?” Betriz demanded coldly. “It is unseemly and untimely.”

Dy Jironal’s lips parted in his beard; he was clearly taken aback. After a moment, his teeth snapped closed. “Where is the royesse, then? I must see the royesse.”

“She is sleeping a little, for the first time in days. I’ll not have her disturbed. She’ll have to exchange dreams for nightmare soon enough.” Betriz’s nostrils flared with open hostility.

Dy Jironal’s back straightened; his breath hissed in. “Wake her? Can you wake her?”

Dear gods. Might Iselle have . . . ? But before this new panic closed down Cazaril’s throat, Iselle herself appeared, pushed between her ladies, and walked coolly forward into the antechamber to face dy Jironal.

“I do not sleep. What do you want, my lord?” Her eyes passed over her brother Orico, hovering at the edge of the mob, and dismissed him with contempt, returning to dy Jironal. Her brows tensed in wariness. No question but that she understood whose power forced her to her unwelcome wedding.

Dy Jironal stared from woman to woman, all indisputably alive before him. He wheeled around and stared again at Cazaril, who was blinking at Iselle. Aura flared around her, too, just like Orico, but hers was more disturbed, a churning of deep darkness and luminous pale blue, like the aurora he’d once seen in the far southern night sky.

“Whoever,” grated dy Jironal. “Wherever. I’ll find the filthy coward’s corpse if I have to search all of Chalion.”

“And then what?” inquired Orico, rubbing his unshaven jowls. “Hang it?” He returned a raised-brow look of irony for dy Jironal’s driven glare; dy Jironal whirled and stamped back out. Cazaril stepped aside to let the entourage pass, his gaze flicking covertly from Orico to Iselle, comparing the two . . . hallucinations? No one else here pulsed like that. Maybe I’m sick. Maybe I’m mad.

“Cazaril,” said Iselle in urgent bewilderment as soon as the men had cleared the outer door—Nan hurried to shut it behind the invaders—“what has happened?”

“Someone killed Dondo dy Jironal last night. By death magic.”

Her lips parted, and her hands clasped together like a child just promised its heart’s desire. “Oh! Oh! Oh, this is welcome news! Oh, thank the Lady, oh, thank the Bastard—I will send such gifts to his altar—oh, Cazaril, who—?”

At Betriz’s look of wild surmise in his direction, Cazaril grimaced. “Not me. Obviously.” Though not for want of trying.

“Did you—” Betriz began, then pressed her lips closed. Cazaril’s grimace tilted in appreciation of her delicacy in not inquiring, out loud before two witnesses, if he’d plotted a capital crime. He hardly needed to speak; her eyes blazed with speculation.

Iselle paced back and forth, almost bouncing with relief. “I think I felt it,” she said in a voice of great wonder. “In any case, I felt something . . . midnight, around midnight, you said?” No one had said so here. “An easing of my heart, as if something in me knew my prayers were heard. But I never expected this. I’d asked the Lady for my death . . .” She paused, and touched her hand to her broad white forehead. “Or what She willed.” Her voice slowed. “Cazaril . . . did I . . . could I have done this? Did the goddess answer me so?”

“I . . . I don’t see how, Royesse. You prayed to the Lady of Spring, did you not?”

“Yes, and to Her Mother of Summer, both. But mostly to Spring herself.”

“The Great Ladies grant miracles of life, and healing. Not death.” Normally. And all miracles were rare and capricious. Gods. Who knew their limits, their purposes?

“It didn’t feel like death,” Iselle confessed. “And yet I was eased. I took a little food and didn’t throw it up, and I slept for a time.”

Nan dy Vrit nodded confirmation. “And glad I was of it, my lady.”

Cazaril took a deep breath. “Well, dy Jironal will solve the mystery for us, I’m sure. He’ll hunt down every person to die last night in Cardegoss—in all of Chalion, I have no doubt—-until he finds out his brother’s murderer.”

“Bless the poor soul who put his vile plans in such disarray.” Formally, Iselle touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, spreading her fingers wide. “And at such a cost. May the Bastard’s demons grant him what mercy ever they can.”

“Amen,” said Cazaril. “Let’s just hope dy Jironal finds no close comrades or family to wreak his vengeance upon.” He wrapped his arms around his belly, which was cramping again.

Betriz came near him and stared him in the face, her hand going out but then falling back hesitantly. “Lord Caz, you look dreadful. Your skin is the color of cold porridge.”

“I’m . . . ill. Something I ate.” He took a breath. “So we prepare today not for grievous wedding but joyous funeral. I trust you ladies will contain your glee in public?”

Nan dy Vrit snorted. Iselle motioned her to silence, and said firmly, “Solemn piety, I promise you. And if it is thanksgiving and not sorrow in my heart, only the gods shall know.”

Cazaril nodded, and rubbed his aching neck. “Usually, a victim of death magic is burned before nightfall, to deny the body, the divines say, to uncanny things that might want to move in. Apparently, such a death invites them. It will be a terribly hurried funeral for such a high lord. They’ll have to assemble all before dark.” Iselle’s coruscating aura was making him almost nauseated. He swallowed, and looked away from her.

“Then, Cazaril,” said Betriz, “for pity’s sake go lie down till then. We’re safe, all unexpectedly. You need do no more.” She took him by his cold hands, clasped them briefly, and smiled in wry concern. He managed a wan return smile, and retreated.

* * *

HE CRAWLED BACK INTO HIS BED. HE HAD LAIN THERE perhaps an hour, bewildered and still shivering, when his door swung open and Betriz tiptoed in to stare down at him. She laid a hand across his clammy forehead.

“I was afraid you’d taken a fever,” she said, “but you’re chilled.”

“I was, um . . . chilled, yes. Must have thrown off my blankets in the night.”

She touched his shoulder. “Your clothes are damp through.” Her eyes narrowed. “When was the last time you ate?”

He could not remember. “Yesterday morning. I think.”

“I see.” She frowned at him a moment longer, then whirled and went out.

Ten minutes later, a maid arrived with a warming pan full of hot coals and a feather quilt; a few minutes after that, a manservant with a can of hot water and firm instructions to see him washed and put back to bed in dry nightclothes. This, in a castle gone mad with the disruption of every courtier and lady at once trying to prepare themselves for an unscheduled public appearance of utmost formality. Cazaril questioned nothing. The servant had just finished tucking him into the hot dry envelope of his sheets when Betriz reappeared with a crockery bowl on a tray. She propped his door open and seated herself on the edge of his bed.

“Eat this.”

It was bread soaked in steaming milk, laced with honey. He accepted the first spoonful in bemused surprise, then struggled up on his pillows. “I’m not that sick.” Attempting to regain his dignity, he took the bowl from her; she made no objection, as long as he continued to eat. He discovered he was ravenous. By the time he’d finished, he’d stopped shivering.

She smiled in satisfaction. “Your color’s much less ghastly now. Good.”

“How fares the royesse?”

“Vastly better. She’s . . . I want to say, collapsed, but I don’t mean overcome. The blessed release that comes when an unbearable pressure is suddenly removed. It’s a joy to look upon her.”

“Yes. I understand.”

Betriz nodded. “She’s resting now, till time to dress.” She took the empty bowl from him, set it aside, and lowered her voice. “Cazaril, what did you do last night?”

“Nothing. Evidently.”

Her lips thinned in exasperation. But what use was it to lay the burden of his secret upon her now? Confession might relieve his soul, but it would put hers in danger in any subsequent investigation that demanded oath-sworn testimony from her.

“Lord dy Rinal had it that you paid a page to catch you a rat last night. It was that news that sent Chancellor dy Jironal pelting up to your bedchamber, dy Rinal told me. The page said you’d claimed you wanted it to eat.”

“Well, so. It’s no crime for a man to eat a rat. It was a little memorial feast, for the siege of Gotorget.”

“Oh? You just said you’d eaten nothing since yesterday morning.” She hesitated, her eyes anxious. “The chambermaid also said there was blood in your pot that she emptied this morning.”

“Bastard’s demons!” Cazaril, who had slid down into his covers, struggled up again. “Is nothing sacred to castle gossip? Can’t a man even call his chamber pot his own here?”

She held out a hand. “Lord Caz, don’t joke. How sick are you?”

“I had a bellyache. It’s eased off now. A passing thing. So to speak.” He grimaced, and decided not to mention the hallucinations. “Obviously, the blood in the pot was from butchering the rat. And the bellyache just what I deserved, for eating such a disgusting creature. Eh?”

She said slowly, “It’s a good story. It all hangs together.”

“So, there.”

“But Caz—people will think you’re strange.”

“I can add them to the collection along with the ones who think I rape girls. I suppose I need a third perversion, to balance me properly.” Well, there was being suspected of attempting death magic. That could balance him over a gallows.

She sat back, frowning deeply. “All right. I won’t press you. But I was wondering . . .” She wrapped her arms around herself, and regarded him intently. “If two—theoretical—persons were to attempt death magic on the same victim at the same time, might they each end up . . . half-dead?”

Cazaril stared back—no, she didn’t look sick—and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Given all the various vain attempts that people have made to compel the gods with death magic, if it could happen that way, it surely would have before now. The Bastard’s death demon is always portrayed in the Temple carvings with a yoke over his shoulders and two identical buckets, one for each soul. I don’t think the demon can choose differently.” Umegat’s words came back to him, I’m afraid that’s just the way it works. “I’m not even sure the god can choose differently.”

Her eyes narrowed further. “You said, if you weren’t back this morning, not to worry for you, or look for you. You said you’d be all right. You also said, if the bodies are not burned properly, terrible uncanny things happen to them.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I made provision.” Of sorts.

“What provision? You sneaked away, leaving none who cared for you to know where to look or even whether to pray!”

He cleared his throat. “Fonsa’s crows. I climbed over the roof to Fonsa’s Tower to, ah, say my prayers last night. If, if things had, ah, come out differently, I figured they’d clear up the mess, just as their brethren clean up a battlefield, or a stray sheep lost over a cliff.”

“Cazaril!” she cried in indignation, then hastily lowered her voice to a near whisper. “Caz, that’s, that’s . . . you mean to tell me you crawled off all alone, to die in despair, expecting to leave your body to be eaten by . . . that’s horrid!”

He was startled to see tears welling in her eyes. “Hey, now! It’s not so bad. Right soldierly, I thought.” His hand began to reach for the drops on her cheeks, then hesitated and fell back to his coverlet.

Her fists clenched in her lap. “If you ever do anything like that again without telling me—telling anyone—I’ll, I’ll . . . slap you silly!” She knuckled her eyes, rubbed her face, and sat up, her spine stern. Her voice returned abruptly to a conversational tone. “The funeral has been set for an hour before sunset, at the temple. Do you mean to go, or will you stay in bed?”

“If I can walk at all, I’m going. I mean to see it through. Every enemy of Dondo’s will be there, if only to prove they didn’t do it. It’s going to be a remarkable event to behold.”

THE FUNERAL RITES AT THE TEMPLE OF CARDEGOSS were far more heavily attended for Dondo dy Jironal than they had been for poor lonely dy Sanda. Roya Orico himself, soberly garbed, led the mourners from the Zangre walking in loose procession down the hill. Royina Sara was carried in a sedan chair. Her face was as blank as though carved from an ice block, but her raiment was a shout of color, festival gear from three holidays jumbled together, draped and spangled with what looked like half the jewels from her jewel case. Everyone pretended not to notice.

Cazaril eyed her covertly, but not for the sake of her bizarrely chosen clothing. It was the other garment, the shadow-cloak, visible-invisible twin to Orico’s, that tugged and twisted at his mind’s eye. Teidez wore another such dark aura, blurring along with his steps down the cobbled streets. Whatever the black mirage was, it seemed to run in the family. Cazaril wondered what he would see if he could look upon Dowager Royina Ista right now.

The archdivine of Cardegoss himself, in his five-colored robes, conducted the ceremony, so crowded it was held in the temple’s main courtyard. The procession from the Jironals’ palace placed the bier with Dondo’s body down a few paces in front of the gods’ hearth, a round stone platform with a pierced copper tent raised over it on five slim pillars to protect the holy fire from the elements. A shadowless gray light filled the court as the cold wet day sank toward foggy evening. The air was hazy violet with a clashing mélange of the incenses burned in the prayers and rites of cleansing.

Dondo’s stiff body, laid out on the bier and banked around with flowers and herbs of good fortune and symbolic protection—too late, Cazaril thought—had been dressed in the blue-and-white robes of his holy generalship of the Daughter’s military order. The sword of his rank lay unsheathed upon his chest, his hands clasped over the hilt. His body did not seem particularly swollen or misshapen—dy Rinal whispered the gruesome rumor that it had been tightly wrapped with linen bands before being dressed. The corpse’s face was hardly more puffy than from one of Dondo’s morning hangovers. But he would have to be burned with his rings still on. They’d never pry them from those sausage fingers without the aid of a butcher’s knife.

Cazaril had managed the walk down from the Zangre without stumbling, but his stomach was cramping again now, unpleasantly distended against his belt. He took what he hoped was an unobtrusive place standing behind Betriz and Nan in the crowd from the castle. Iselle was pulled away to stand between the chancellor and Roya Orico in the position of a chief mourner that her brief betrothal bequeathed her. She was still shimmering like an aurora in Cazaril’s aching eyes. Her face was stern and pale. The sight of Dondo’s body had apparently drained her of any impulse to an unseemly display of joy.

Two courtiers stepped forth to deliver seemingly heartfelt eulogies upon Dondo that Cazaril entirely failed to relate to the erratic real life of the man cut down here. Chancellor dy Jironal was too overcome to speak very long, though whether with grief or rage or both it was hard to tell beneath that steely surface. He did announce a purse of a thousand royals reward for information leading to the identification of his brother’s murderer, the only overt reference made this day to the abrupt manner of Dondo’s death.

It was clear that a large purse had been laid down on the temple altar. What seemed all the dedicats, acolytes, and divines of Cardegoss were massed in robed blocks to chant the prayers and responses in both unison and harmony, as though extra holiness were to be obtained by volume. One of the singers, in the green-robed squad of altos, caught Cazaril’s inner eye. She was middle-aged and dumpy, and she glowed like a candle seen through green glass. She looked up once directly at Cazaril, then away, back to the harried divine who directed their orisons.

Cazaril nudged Nan and whispered, “Who is that woman acolyte on the end of the second row of the Mother’s singers, do you know?”

She glanced over. “One of the Mother’s midwives. I believe she’s said to be very good.”

“Oh.”

When the sacred animals were led forth, the crowd grew attentive. It was by no means clear which god would take up the soul of Dondo dy Jironal. His predecessor in the Daughter’s generalship, though a father and grandfather, had been claimed at once by the Lady of Spring in whose long service he had died. Dondo himself had served in the Son’s military order as an officer in his youth. And he was known to have sired a scattering of bastards, as well as two scorned daughters by his late first wife, left to be raised by country kin. And—unspoken thought—as his soul had been carried off by the Bastard’s death demon, it had surely passed through the Bastard’s hands. Might those hands have closed upon it?

The acolyte-groom carrying the Daughter’s jay stepped forth at Archdivine Mendenal’s gesture, and raised her wrist. The bird bobbed, but clung stubbornly to her sleeve. She glanced up at the archdivine, who frowned and gave her a little nod toward the bier. Her nostrils flared in faint protest, but she obediently stepped forward, wrapped both hands around the jay, and set it firmly down upon the corpse’s chest.

She lifted her hands. The jay lifted its tail, dropped a blob of guano, and shot skyward, trailing its embroidered silk jesses, screeching piercingly. At least three men in Cazaril’s hearing choked and hissed but, at the sight of the chancellor’s set teeth, did not laugh aloud. Iselle’s eyes blazed like cerulean fires, and she cast her glance demurely downward; her aura roiled. The acolyte stepped back, head tipped up, following the bird’s flight anxiously. The jay came to roost on the ornaments at the top of one of the ring of porphyry pillars circling the court, and screeched again. The acolyte glared at the archdivine; he waved her hastily away, and she bowed and retreated to go try to coax the bird back to her hand.

The Mother’s green bird also refused to leave its handler’s arm. Archdivine Mendenal did not repeat the previous disastrous experiment, but merely nodded her back to her place in the circle of creatures.

The Son’s acolyte dragged the fox by its chain to the edge of the bier. The animal whined and snapped, its black claws scrabbling noisily on the tiles as it struggled to get away. The archdivine waved him back.

The stout gray wolf, sitting on its haunches with its great red tongue lolling out of its unmuzzled jaws, growled deeply as its gray-robed handler suggestively lifted its silver chain. The vibrato resonated around the stone courtyard. The wolf lowered itself to its belly on the tiles, and stretched out its paws. Gingerly, the acolyte lowered his hands and stood down; his glance at the archdivine shouted silently, I’m not touching this. Mendenal didn’t argue.

All eyes turned expectantly to the Bastard’s white-robed acolyte with her white rats. Chancellor dy Jironal’s lips were pressed flat and pale with his impotent fury, but there was nothing he could do or say. The white lady took a breath, stepped forward to the bier, and lowered her sacred creatures to Dondo’s chest to sign the god’s acceptance of the unacceptable, disdained, discarded soul.

The moment her hands released the silky white bodies, both rats sprang away to either side of the bier as though shot from catapults. The acolyte dodged right and left as though unable to decide which sacred charge to chase after first, and flung up her hands. One rat scurried for the safety of the pillars. The other scampered into the crowd of mourners, which stirred around its track; a couple of ladies yipped nervously. A murmur of astonishment, disbelief, and dismay ran through the array of courtiers and ladies, and a stream of shocked whispers.

Betriz’s was among them. “Cazaril,” she said anxiously, crowding back under his arm to hiss in his ear, “what does it mean? The Bastard always takes the leftovers. Always. It is His, His . . . it’s His job. He can’t not take a severed soul—I thought He already had.”

Cazaril was stunned, too. “If no god has taken up Lord Dondo’s soul . . . then it’s still in the world. I mean, if it’s not there, then it has to be here. Somewhere . . .” An unquiet ghost, a revenant spirit. Sundered and damned.

The ceremonies stopped dead as the archdivine and Chancellor dy Jironal retreated around the hearth for a low-voiced conversation, or possibly argument, from the rise and chop of swallowed words that drifted back to the curious crowd waiting. The archdivine popped around the hearth to call an acolyte of the Bastard to him; after a whispered conference, the white-garbed young man departed at a run. The gray sky overhead was darkening. A subdivine, in a burst of initiative, struck up an unscheduled hymn from the robed singers to cover the gap. By the time they’d finished, dy Jironal and Mendenal had returned.

Still they waited. The singers embarked on another hymn. Cazaril found himself wishing he’d used Ordol’s Fivefold Pathway for something other than a prop to cover his naps; alas, the book was still back in Valenda. If Dondo’s spirit had not been taken by the servant-demon back to its master, where was it? And if the demon could not return except with both its soul-buckets filled, where was the sundered soul of Dondo’s unknown murderer now? For that matter, where was the demon? Cazaril had never read much theology. For some reason now obscure to him, he’d thought it an impractical study, suited only to unworldly dreamers. Till he’d waked to this nightmare.

A scritching noise from his boot made him look down. The sacred white rat was stretching itself up his leg, its pink nose quivering. It rubbed its little pointed face rapidly against Cazaril’s shin. He bent and picked it up, meaning to return it to its handler. It writhed ecstatically in his cupped hands, and licked his thumb.

To Cazaril’s surprise, the wheezing acolyte returned to the temple courtyard leading the groom Umegat, dressed as usual in the tabard of the Zangre. But it was Umegat who stunned him.

The Roknari shone with a white aura like a man standing in front of a clear glass window at a sea dawn. Cazaril shut his eyes, though he knew he didn’t see this with his eyes. The white blaze still moved behind his lids. Over there, a darkness that wasn’t darkness, and two more, and an unrestful aurora, and off to the side, a faint green spark. His eyes sprang open. Umegat stared straight at him for the fraction of a second, and Cazaril felt flensed. The roya’s groom moved on, to present himself with a diffident bow to the archdivine, and step aside for some whispered conference.

The archdivine called the Bastard’s acolyte to him, who had recaptured one of her charges; she gave up the rat to Umegat, who cradled it in one arm and glanced toward Cazaril. The Roknari groom trod over to him, humbly excusing himself through the crowd of courtiers, who barely glanced at him. Cazaril could not understand why they did not open before that bow wave of his white aura like the sea before a spinnaker-driven ship. Umegat held out his open hand. Cazaril blinked down stupidly at it.

“The sacred rat, my lord?” prompted Umegat gently.

“Oh.” The creature was still sucking on his fingers, tickling them. Umegat pulled the reluctant animal off Cazaril’s sleeve as though removing a burr and just prevented its mate from springing across to take its place. Juggling rats, he walked quietly back to the bier, where the archdivine waited. Was Cazaril losing his mind—don’t answer that—or did Mendenal barely keep himself from bowing to the groom? The Zangre’s courtiers seemed to see nothing unreasonable in the archdivine calling in the roya’s most expert animal-handler in this awkward crisis. All eyes were locked on the rats, not on the Roknari. The unreason was all Cazaril’s.

Umegat held the creatures in his arms and whispered to them, and approached Dondo’s body. A long moment, while the rats, though quiescent, made no move to claim Dondo for their god. At last Umegat backed away, and shook his head apologetically to the archdivine, and gave up the rats to their anxious young woman.

Mendenal prostrated himself between the hearth and the bier for a moment of abject prayer, but rose again soon. Dedicats were bringing out tapers to light the wall lanterns around the darkening courtyard. The archdivine called forth the pallbearers to take up the bier to Dondo’s waiting pyre, and the singers filed out in procession.

Iselle returned to Betriz and Cazaril. She rubbed the back of her hand across eyes rimmed with dark circles. “I don’t think I can bear any more of this. Dy Jironal can see to his brother’s roasting. Take me home, Lord Caz.”

The royesse’s little party split off from the main body of mourners, not the only wearied persons to do so, and exited through the front portico into the damp dusk of the autumn day.

The groom Umegat, waiting with his shoulders propped against a pillar, shoved himself upright, came toward them, and bowed. “My lord dy Cazaril. Might I have a brief word?”

It almost surprised Cazaril that the aura did not reflect off the wet pavement at his feet. He gave Iselle an apologetic salute and went aside with the Roknari. The three women waited at the edge of the portico, Iselle leaning on Betriz’s arm.

“My lord, at your earliest convenience, I beg that I might have some private audience with you.”

“I’ll come to you at the menagerie as soon as I have Iselle settled.” Cazaril hesitated. “Do you know that you are lit like a burning torch?”

The groom inclined his head. “So I have been told, my lord, by the few with eyes to see. One can never see oneself, alas. No mundane mirror reflects this. Only the eyes of a soul.”

“There was a woman inside who glowed like a green candle.”

“Mother Clara? Yes, she just spoke to me of you. She is a most excellent midwife.”

“What is that, that anti-light, then?” Cazaril glanced toward where the women lingered.

Umegat touched his lips. “Not here, if you please, my lord.”

Cazaril’s mouth formed a silent Oh. He nodded.

The Roknari swept him a lower bow. As he turned to pad quietly into the gathering gloom, he added over his shoulder, “You are lit like a burning city.”

The royesse was so drained by the ordeal of Lord Dondo’s odd funeral that she was stumbling by the time they had climbed to the castle again. Cazaril left Nan and Betriz making sensible plans to put Iselle straight to bed and have the servants bring a plain dinner to their chambers. He made his way back out of the main block to the Zangre’s gates. Pausing, he glanced out over the city to see if a column of smoke was still rising from the temple. He fancied he saw a faint orange reflection on the lowering clouds, but it was too dark by now to make out anything more.

His heart leapt in shock at the sudden flapping around him as he crossed the stable yard, but it was only Fonsa’s crows, mobbing him again. He fended off two that attempted to land on his shoulder, and tried to wave them away, hissing and stamping. They hopped back out of reach, but would not leave, following him, conspicuously, all the way to the menagerie.

One of Umegat’s undergrooms was waiting by the wall lanterns bracketing the aisle door. He was a little, elderly, thumbless man, who gave Cazaril a wide smile that showed a truncated tongue, accounting for a welcome that was a kind of mouthed hum, the meaning made clear by his friendly gestures. He slid the broad door back just enough to admit Cazaril before him, and shooed away the crows who tried to follow, scooping the most persistent one back out the gap with a flip of his foot before closing it.

The groom’s candlestick, shielded by a blown-glass tulip, had a thick handle made for him to wrap his fingers around. By this light he guided Cazaril down the menagerie’s aisle. The animals in their stalls snuffled and thumped as Cazaril passed, pressing to the bars to stare at him from the shadows. The leopard’s eyes shone like green sparks; its ratcheting growl echoed off the walls, not low and hostile, but pulsing in a weirdly inquiring singsong.

The menagerie’s grooms had their sleeping quarters on half the building’s upper floor, the other half being devoted to the storage of fodder and straw. A door stood open, candlelight spilling from it into the dark corridor. The undergroom knocked on the frame; Umegat’s voice responded, “Good. Thank you.”

The undergroom gave way with a bow. Cazaril ducked through the door to see a narrow but private chamber with a window looking out over the dark stable yard. Umegat pulled the curtain across the window and bustled around a rude pine table that held a brightly patterned cloth, a wine jug and clay cups, and a plate with bread and cheese. “Thank you for coming, Lord Cazaril. Enter, please, seat yourself. Thank you, Daris, that will be all.” Umegat closed the door. Cazaril paused on the way to the chair Umegat’s gesture had indicated to stare at a tall shelf crammed with books, including titles in Ibran, Darthacan, and Roknari. A bit of gold lettering on a familiar-looking spine on the top shelf caught his eye, The Fivefold Pathway of the Soul. Ordol. The leather binding was worn with use, the volume, and most of its company, free of dust. Theology, mostly. Why am I not surprised?

Cazaril lowered himself onto the plain wooden chair. Umegat turned up a cup and poured a heavy red wine into it, smiled briefly, and held it out to his guest. Cazaril closed his shaking hands around it with vast gratitude. “Thank you. I need that.”

“I should imagine so, my lord.” Umegat poured a cup for himself and sat across the table from Cazaril. The table might be plain and poor, but the generous braces of wax candles upon it gave a rich, clear light. A reading man’s light.

Cazaril raised the cup to his lips and gulped. When he set it down, Umegat immediately topped it up again. Cazaril closed his eyes and opened them. Open or shut, Umegat still glowed.

“You are an acolyte—no. You’re a divine. Aren’t you,” said Cazaril.

Umegat cleared his throat apologetically. “Yes. Of the Bastard’s Order. Although that is not why I am here.”

“Why are you here?”

“We’ll come to that.” Umegat bent forward, picked up the waiting knife, and began to saw off hunks of bread and cheese.

“I thought—I hoped—I wondered—if you might have been sent by the gods. To guide and guard me.”

Umegat’s lip quirked up. “Indeed? And here I was wondering if you had been sent by the gods to guide and guard me.”

“Oh. That’s . . . not so good, then.” Cazaril shrank a little in his seat, and took another gulp of wine. “Since when?”

“Since the day in the menagerie that Fonsa’s crow practically jumped up and down on your head crying This one! This one! My chosen god is, dare I say it, fiendishly ambiguous at times, but that was a little hard to miss.”

“Was I glowing, then?”

“No.”

“When did I start, um, doing that?”

“Sometime between the last time I saw you, which was late yesterday afternoon when you came back to the Zangre limping as though you’d been thrown from a horse, and today at the temple. I believe you may have a better guess than I do as to the exact time. Will you not take a little food, my lord? You don’t look well.”

Cazaril had eaten nothing since Betriz had brought him the milk sops at noon. Umegat waited until his guest’s mouth was full of cheese and chewy crust before remarking, “One of my varied tasks as a young divine, before I came to Cardegoss, was as an assistant Inquirer for the Temple investigating alleged charges of death magic.” Cazaril choked; Umegat went on serenely, “Or death miracle, to put it with more theological accuracy. We uncovered quite a number of ingenious fakes—usually poison, though the, ah, dimmer murderers sometimes tried cruder methods. I had to explain to them that the Bastard does not ever execute unrepentant sinners with a dirk, nor a large hammer. The true miracles were much more rare than their notoriety would suggest. But I never encountered an authentic case where the victim was an innocent. To put it more finely still, what the Bastard granted was miracles of justice.” His voice had grown crisper, more decisive, the servility evaporating out of it along with most of his soft Roknari accent.

“Ah,” Cazaril mumbled, and took another gulp of wine. This is the most wit-full man I have met in Cardegoss, and I’ve spent the last three months looking past him because he wears a servant’s garb. Granted, Umegat apparently did not wish to draw attention to himself. “That tabard is as good as a cloak of invisibility, you know.”

Umegat smiled, and took a sip of his wine. “Yes.”

“So . . . are you an Inquirer now?” Was it all over? Would he be charged, convicted, executed for his murderous, if vain, attempt on Dondo?

“No. Not anymore.”

“What are you, then?”

To Cazaril’s bewilderment, Umegat’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “I’m a saint.”

Cazaril stared at him for a long, long moment, then drained his cup. Amiably, Umegat refilled it. Cazaril was certain of very little tonight, but somehow, he didn’t think Umegat was mad. Or lying.

“A saint. Of the Bastard.”

Umegat nodded.

“That’s . . . an unusual line of work, for a Roknari. How did it come about?” This was inane, but with two cups of wine on an empty stomach, he was growing light-headed.

Umegat’s smile grew sadly introspective. “For you—the truth. I suppose the names no longer matter. This was a lifetime ago. When I was a young lord in the Archipelago, I fell in love.”

“Young lords and young louts do that everywhere.”

“My lover was about thirty then. A man of keen mind and kind heart.”

“Oh. Not in the Archipelago, you don’t.”

“Indeed. I had no interest in religion whatsoever. For obvious reasons, he was a secret Quintarian. We made plans to flee together. I reached the ship to Brajar. He did not. I spent the voyage seasick and desperate, learning—I thought—to pray. Hoping he’d made it to another vessel, and we’d meet in the port city we’d chosen for our destination. It was over a year before I found out how he’d met his end, from a Roknari merchant trading there whom we had once both known.”

Cazaril took a drink. “The usual?”

“Oh, yes. Genitals, thumbs—that he might not sign the fifth god—” Umegat touched forehead, navel, groin, and heart, folding his thumb beneath his palm in the Quadrene fashion, denying the fifth finger that was the Bastard’s—“they saved his tongue for last, that he might betray others. He never did. He died a martyr, hanged.”

Cazaril touched forehead, lip, navel, groin, and heart, fingers spread wide. “I’m sorry.”

Umegat nodded. “I thought about it for a time. At least, those times when I wasn’t drunk or vomiting or being stupid, eh? Youth, eh. It didn’t come easily. Finally, one day, I walked to the temple and turned myself in.” He took a breath. “And the Bastard’s Order took me in. Gave a home to the homeless, friends to the friendless, honor to the despised. And they gave me work. I was . . . charmed.”

A Temple divine. Umegat was leaving out a few details, Cazaril felt. Forty years or so of them. But there was nothing inexplicable about an intelligent, energetic, dedicated man rising through the Temple hierarchy to such a rank. It was the part about shining like a full moon over a snowfall that was making his head reel. “Good. Wonderful. Great works. Foundling hospitals and, um, inquiries. Now explain why you glow in the dark.” He had either drunk too much, or not nearly enough, he decided glumly.

Umegat rubbed his neck and pulled gently on his queue. “Do you understand what it means to be a saint?”

Cazaril cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You must be very virtuous, I suppose.”

“No, in fact. One need not be good. Or even nice.” Umegat looked wry of a sudden. “Grant you, once one experiences . . . what one experiences, one’s tastes change. Material ambition seems immaterial. Greed, pride, vanity, wrath, just grow too dull to bother with.”

“Lust?”

Umegat brightened. “Lust, I’m happy to say, seems largely unaffected. Or perhaps I might grant, love. For the cruelty and selfishness that make lust vile become tedious. But personally, I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.” Umegat emptied his cup. “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn’t virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer. Has anyone ever quoted you Ordol’s classic sermon of the cups?”

“That thing where the divine pours water all over everything? I first heard it when I was ten. I thought it was pretty entertaining when he got his shoes wet, but then, I was ten. I’m afraid our Temple divine at Cazaril tended to drone on.”

“Attend now, and you shall not be bored.” Umegat inverted his clay cup upon the cloth. “Men’s will is free. The gods may not invade it, any more than I may pour wine into this cup through its bottom.”

“No, don’t waste the wine!” Cazaril protested, as Umegat reached for the jug. “I’ve seen it demonstrated before.”

Umegat grinned, and desisted. “But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act. They can seep in through the minds of animals, sometimes, with effort. Plants . . . require much foresight. Or”—Umegat turned his cup upright again, and lifted the jug—“sometimes, a man may open himself to them, and let them pour through him into the world.” He filled his cup. “A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.” He lifted his cup to his lips, stared disquietingly at Cazaril over the rim, and drank. He added, “Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn’t hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters.”

“Um,” managed Cazaril.

Umegat sat back and studied him for a time. Cazaril didn’t think the Roknari was looking at his flesh. So, tell me, what’s a renegade Roknari Temple divine scholar-saint of the Bastard doing disguised as a groom in the Zangre’s menagerie? Out loud, he managed to pare this down to a plaintive, “What are you doing here?”

Umegat shrugged. “What the god wills.” He took pity on Cazaril’s exasperated look, and added, “What He wills, it seems, is to keep Roya Orico alive.”

Cazaril sat up, fighting the slurry that the wine seemed to be making of his brains. “Orico, sick?”

“Yes. A state secret, mind you, although one that’s grown obvious enough to anyone with wits and eyes. Nevertheless—” Umegat laid his finger to his lips in a command of discretion.

“Yes, but—I thought healing was the province of the Mother and the Daughter.”

“Were the roya’s illness of natural causes, yes.”

“Unnatural causes?” Cazaril squinted. “The dark cloak—can you see it, too?”

“Yes.”

“But Teidez has the shadow, too, and Iselle—and Royina Sara is tainted as well. What evil thing is it, that you would not let me speak of it in the street?”

Umegat put his cup down, tugged on his bronze-gray queue, and sighed. “It all goes back to Fonsa the Fairly-Wise and the Golden General. Which is, I suppose, history and tale to you. I lived through those desperate times.” He added conversationally, “I saw the general once, you know. I was a spy in his princedom at the time. I hated everything he stood for, and yet . . . had he given me a word, a mere word, I think I might have crawled after him on my knees. He was more than just god-touched. He was avatar incarnate, striding toward the fulcrum of the world in the perfected instant of time. Almost. He was reaching for his moment when Fonsa and the Bastard cut him down.” Umegat’s cultured voice, lightly reminiscent, had dropped to remembered awe. He stared into the middle distance of his memory.

His gaze jumped out of the lost past and back to Cazaril. Remembering to smile, he held out his hand, thumb up, and waggled it gently from side to side. “The Bastard, though the weakest of His family, is the god of balance. The opposition that gives the hand its clever grip. It is said that if ever one god subsumes all the others, truth will become single, and simple, and perfect, and the world will end in a burst of light. Some tidy-minded men actually find this idea attractive. Personally, I find it a horror, but then I always did have low tastes. In the meantime, the Bastard, unfixed in any season, circles to preserve us all.” Umegat’s fingers tapped one by one, Daughter-Mother-Son-Father, against the ball of his thumb.

He went on, “The Golden General was a tidal wave of destiny, gathering to crash upon the world. Fonsa’s soul could match his soul, but could not balance his vast fate. When the death demon carried their souls from the world, that fate overflowed to settle upon Fonsa’s heirs, a miasma of ill luck and subtle bitterness. The black shadow you see is the Golden General’s unfulfilled destiny, curdling around his enemies’ lives. His death curse, if you will.”

Cazaril wondered if this explained why all of Ias’s and Orico’s military campaigns that he’d ever been in had fared so ill. “How . . . how may the curse be lifted?”

Umegat sighed. “In six years, no answer has been given me. Perhaps it will run out in the deaths of all who flowed from Fonsa’s loins.”

But that’s . . . the roya, Teidez—Iselle!

“Or perhaps,” Umegat continued, “even then, it will continue to trickle down through time like a stream of poison. It should have killed Orico years ago. Contact with the sacred creatures cleanses the roya from the corrosion of the curse, but only for a little time. The menagerie delays his destruction, but the god has never told me why.” Umegat’s voice went glum. “The gods don’t write letters of instruction, you know. Not even to their saints. I’ve suggested it, in my prayers. Sat by the hour with the ink drying on my quill, entirely at His service. And what does He send instead? An overexcited crow with a one-word vocabulary.”

Cazaril winced in guilt, thinking of that poor crow. In truth, he felt far worse about the crow’s death than Dondo’s.

“So that’s what I’m doing here,” said Umegat. He glanced up keenly at Cazaril. “And so. What are you doing here?”

Cazaril spread his hands helplessly. “Umegat, I don’t know.” He added plaintively, “Can’t you tell? You said . . . I was lit up. Do I look like you? Or like Iselle? Or Orico, even?”

“You look like nothing I’ve seen since I was lent the inner eye. If Iselle is a candle, you are a conflagration. You are . . . actually quite disturbing to contemplate.”

“I don’t feel like a conflagration.”

“What do you feel like?”

“Right now? Like a pile of dung. Sick. Drunk.” He swirled the red wine in the bottom of his cup. “I have this belly cramp that comes and goes.” It was quiescent at the moment, but his stomach was still swollen. “And tired. I haven’t felt this tired since I was sick in the Mother’s house in Zagosur.”

“I think,” Umegat spoke carefully, “that it is very, very important that you tell me the truth.”

His lips still smiled, but his gray eyes seemed to burn. It occurred to Cazaril then that a good Temple Inquirer would likely be charming, and adept at worming confidences from people in his investigations. Smooth at getting them drunk.

You laid down your life. It’s not fair to whine for it back now.

“I attempted death magic upon Dondo dy Jironal last night.”

Umegat looked neither shocked nor surprised, merely more intent. “Yes. Where?”

“In Fonsa’s Tower. I crawled over the roof slates. I brought my own rat, but the crow . . . it came to me. It wasn’t afraid. I’d fed it, you see.”

“Go on . . .” breathed Umegat.

“I slew the rat, and broke the poor crow, and I prayed on my knees. And then I hurt. I wasn’t expecting that. And I couldn’t breathe. The candles went out. And I said, Thank you, because I felt . . .” He could not speak of what he’d felt, that strange peace, as if he’d lain down in a place of safety to rest forever. “And then I passed out. I thought I was dying.”

“And then?”

“Then . . . nothing. I woke up in the dawn fog, sick and cold and feeling an utter fool. No, wait—I’d had a nightmare about Dondo choking to death. But I knew I’d failed. So I crawled back to bed. And then dy Jironal came bursting in . . .”

Umegat drummed his fingers on the table a moment, staring at him through slitted eyes. And then he stared with his eyes closed. Open again. “My lord, may I touch you?”

“All right . . .” Briefly, as the Roknari bent over him, Cazaril feared some unwelcome attempt at intimacy, but Umegat’s touch was as professional as any physician’s; forehead, face, neck, spine, heart, belly . . . Cazaril tensed, but Umegat’s hand descended no farther. When he finished, Umegat’s face was set. The Roknari went to fetch another jug of wine from a basket by the door before returning to his chair.

Cazaril attempted to fend the jug from his cup. “I’ve had enough. I’ll be stumbling if I take any more.”

“My grooms can walk you back to your chambers in a little while. No?” Umegat filled his own cup instead, and sat again. He ran his finger over the tabletop in a little pattern, repeated three times—Cazaril wasn’t sure if it was a charm or just nerves—and finally said, “By the testimony of the sacred animals, no god accepted the soul of Dondo dy Jironal. Normally, that is a sign that an unquiet spirit is abroad in the world, and relatives and friends—and enemies—rush to buy rites and prayers from the Temple. Some for the sake of the dead—some for their own protection.”

“I am sure,” said Cazaril a little bitterly, “Dondo will have all the prayers that money can buy.”

“I hope so.”

“Why? What . . . ?” What do you see? What do you know?

Umegat glanced up, and inhaled. “Dondo’s spirit was taken by the death demon, but not passed to the gods. This we know. It is my conjecture that the death demon could not return to its master because it was prevented from taking the second and balancing soul.”

Cazaril licked his lips, and husked fearfully, “How, prevented?”

“At the instant of attempting to do so, I believe the demon was captured—constrained—bound, if you will—by a second and simultaneous miracle. Judging by the distinctive colors boiling off you, it was from the holy and gracious hand of the Lady of Spring. If I am right, the acolytes of the Temple can all go back to bed, for Dondo’s spirit is not abroad. It is bound to the death demon, who is bound in turn to the locus of the second soul. Which is presently bound to its still-living body.” Umegat’s finger rose to point directly at Cazaril. “There.”

Cazaril’s jaw fell open. He stared down at his aching, swollen belly, and back up at the fascinated . . . saint. Briefly, he was put in mind of Fonsa’s entranced crows. Violent denial boiled to his lips, and caught there, stopped by his inner sight of Umegat’s clear aura. “I didn’t pray to the Daughter last night!”

“Apparently, someone did.”

Iselle. “The royesse said she prayed. Did you see her as I saw her today—” Cazaril made inarticulate motions with his hands, not knowing what words to use to describe that roiling perturbation. “Is that what you see in me? Does Iselle see me as I do her?”

“Did she say anything about it?” asked Umegat.

“No. But neither did I.”

Umegat gave him that sidewise stare again. “Did you ever see, when you were in the Archipelago, the nights when the sea was Mother-touched? The way the wake glowed green in the breaking waves of a ship’s passage?”

“Yes . . .”

“What you saw around Iselle was such a wake. The passage of the Daughter, like a lingering perfume in the air. What I see in you is not a passage but a Presence. A blessing. Far more intense. Your corona is slowly dying down—the sacred animals should be less enthralled by you in a day or two—but at the center there sits a tight blue core of sapphire, into which I cannot see. I think it is an encapsulation.” He brought his cupped hands together like a man enclosing a live lizard.

Cazaril swallowed, and panted, “Are you saying the goddess has turned my belly into a perfect little annex of hell? One demon, one lost soul, sealed together like two snakes in a bottle?” His clawed hands went to his stomach, as if ready to rip his guts apart on the spot. “And you call it a blessing?”

Umegat’s eyes remained serious, but his brows crimped in sympathy. “Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view? If it’s any consolation to you, I imagine Dondo dy Jironal is even less happy about this development than you are.” He added after a thoughtful moment, “I can’t imagine the demon is too pleased with it, either.”

Cazaril nearly convulsed out of his chair. “Five gods! How do I rid myself of this—this—this—horror?”

Umegat held up a restraining hand. “I . . . suggest . . . that you not be in a great rush about that. The consequences could be tangled.”

“How, tangled? How could anything be more tangled than this monstrosity?”

“Well”—Umegat leaned back and tented his hands together—“the most obvious way to break the, ah, blessing, would be by your death. With your soul freed from its material locus, the demon could fly away with you both.”

A chill stole over Cazaril, as he remembered how his belly cramp had almost betrayed him to a fall when jumping the roof gap at dawn. He took refuge from his drunken terror in a dryness to match Umegat’s. “Oh, wonderful. Have you any other cures to suggest, physician?”

Umegat’s lips twitched, and he acknowledged the jibe with a brief wave of his fingers. “Likewise, should the miracle cease that you presently host—should the Lady’s hand lift,” Umegat mimed someone opening their hands as if to release a bird, “I think the demon would immediately attempt to complete its destiny. Not that it has a choice—the Bastard’s demons have no free will. You can’t argue with or persuade them. In fact, there’s no use talking to one at all.”

“So you’re saying that I could die at any moment!”

“Yes. And this is different from your life yesterday in what way?” Umegat cocked his head in dry inquiry.

Cazaril snorted. It was cold comfort . . . but comfort still, in a backhanded sort of way. Umegat was a sensible saint, it seemed. Which was not what Cazaril would have expected . . . had he ever met a saint before? How would I know? I walked right past this one.

Umegat’s voice took on a tinge of scholarly curiosity. “Actually, this could answer a question I’ve long had. Does the Bastard command a troop of death demons, or just one? If all death miracles in the world cease while the demon is bound in you, it would be compelling evidence for the singularity of that holy power.”

A ghastly laugh pealed from Cazaril’s lips. “My service to Quintarian theology! Gods—Umegat—what am I to do? There has never been any of this, this god-touched madness in my family. I’m not fit for this business. I am not a saint!”

Umegat opened his lips, but then closed them again. He finally said, “One grows more accustomed with use. The first time I hosted a miracle I wasn’t too happy either, and I’m in the trade, so to speak. My personal recommendation to you, tonight, is to get pie-eyed drunk and go to sleep.”

“So I can wake in the morning both demon-ridden and with a hangover?” Granted, he couldn’t imagine getting to sleep under any other circumstances, apart from a blow to the head.

“Well, it worked for me, once. The hangover is a fair trade for being so immobilized one cannot do anything stupid for a little while.” Umegat looked away for a moment. “The gods do not grant miracles for our purposes, but for theirs. If you are become their tool, it is for a greater reason, an urgent reason. But you are the tool. You are not the work. Expect to be valued accordingly.”

While Cazaril was still trying, unsuccessfully, to unravel that, Umegat leaned forward and poured fresh wine into Cazaril’s cup. Cazaril was beyond resistance.

It took two undergrooms, an hour or so later, to guide his slithering steps across the wet cobbles of the stable yard, past the gates, and up the stairs, where they poured his limp form into his bed. Cazaril wasn’t sure just when he parted from his beleaguered consciousness, but never had he been more glad to do so.

Cazaril had to allow Umegat’s wine this much merit—it did mean he spent the first few hours of the next morning wishing for death rather than dreading it. He knew his hangover was passing off when fear began to regain the upper hand.

He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He’d seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he’d had his chances, though the gods knew he’d made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he’d be forced to leave undone.

Fears he’d had no time for during the day he’d stalked Dondo now crowded into his mind. Who would guard his ladies, if he were to die now? How much time was going to be granted to him to try to find some better bastion for them? On whom could they be safely bestowed? Betriz might find protection as the wife, say, of a stout country lord like March dy Palliar. But Iselle? Her grandmother and mother were too weak and distant, Teidez too young, Orico, apparently, entirely the creature of his chancellor. There could be no security for Iselle until she was out of this cursed court altogether.

Another cramp riveted his attention again on the lethal little hell in his belly, and he peered worriedly down under the tent of his sheet at his knotted stomach. How much was this dying going to hurt? He had not passed so much blood this morning. He blinked around his chamber in the early-afternoon light. The odd hallucinations, pale blurred blobs at the corners of his vision that he had earlier blamed on last night’s wine, were still present. Maybe they were another symptom?

A brisk knock sounded at his chamber door. Cazaril crawled from his warm refuge and, walking only a little bent over, went to unlock it. Umegat, bearing a stoppered ewer, bade him good afternoon, stepped within, and closed the door behind him. He was still faintly radiant: alas, yesterday hadn’t been a bizarre bad dream after all.

“My word,” the groom added, staring about in astonishment. He waved his hand. “Shoo! Shoo!”

The pale blurred blobs swirled about the chamber and fled into the walls.

“What are those things?” Cazaril asked, easing back into his bed. “Do you see them, too?”

“Ghosts. Here, drink this.” Umegat poured from the ewer into the glazed cup from Cazaril’s washbasin set, and handed it across. “It will settle your stomach and clear your head.”

About to reject it with loathing, Cazaril discovered it to be not wine but some sort of cold herbed tea. He tasted it cautiously. Pleasantly bitter, its astringency made a most welcome sluicing in his sticky mouth. Umegat pulled a stool over to his bedside and settled cheerfully. Cazaril squeezed his eyes shut, and open again. “Ghosts?”

“I’ve never seen so many of the Zangre’s ghosts collected in one place. They must be attracted to you just like the sacred animals.”

“Can anyone else see them?”

“Anyone with the inner eye. That’s three in Cardegoss, to my knowledge.”

And two of them are here. “Have they been around all this time?”

“I glimpse them now and then. They’re usually more elusive. You needn’t be afraid of them. They are powerless and cannot hurt you. Old lost souls.” In response to Cazaril’s rather stunned stare, Umegat added, “When, as happens from time to time, no god takes up a sundered soul, it is left to wander the world, slowly losing its mindfulness of itself and fading into air. New ghosts first take the form they had in life, but in their despair and loneliness they cannot maintain it.”

Cazaril wrapped his arms around his belly. “Oh.” His mind tried to gallop in three directions at once. So what was the fate of those souls the gods did accept? And just what exactly was happening to the enraged spirit so miraculously and hideously lodged in him? And . . . the Dowager Royina Ista’s words came back to him. The Zangre is haunted, you know. Not metaphor or madness after all, it appeared, but simple observation. How much else, then, of the eerie things she’d said might be not derangement, but plain truth—seen with altered eyes?

He glanced up to find Umegat regarding him thoughtfully. The Roknari inquired politely, “And how are you feeling today?”

“Better this afternoon than this morning.” He added a little reluctantly, “Better than yesterday.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Not yet. Later, perhaps.” He rubbed a hand over his beard. “What’s happening out there?”

Umegat sat back and shrugged. “Chancellor dy Jironal, finding no candidates in the city, has ridden out of Cardegoss in search of the corpse of his brother’s murderer and any confederates left alive.”

“I trust he will not seize some innocent in error.”

“An experienced Inquirer from the Temple rides with him, which should suffice to prevent such mistakes.”

Cazaril digested this. After a moment, Umegat added, “Also, a faction in the military order of the Daughter’s house has sent couriers riding out to all its lord dedicats, calling them to a general council. They mean not to allow Roya Orico to foist another commander like Lord Dondo onto them.”

“How should they defy him? Revolt?”

Umegat hastily waved away this treasonable suggestion. “Certainly not. Petition. Request.”

“Mm. But I thought they protested last time, to no avail. Dy Jironal will not be wanting to let control of that order slip from his hands.”

“The military order is backed by the whole of its house, this time.”

“And, ah . . . what have you been doing today?”

“Praying for guidance.”

“And did you get an answer?”

Umegat smiled ambiguously at him. “Perhaps.”

Cazaril considered for a moment how best to phrase his next remark. “Interesting gossip you’re privy to. I take it, then, that it would now be redundant for me to go down to the temple and confess to Archdivine Mendenal for Dondo’s murder?”

Umegat’s brows went up. “I suppose,” he said after a moment, “that it should not surprise me that the Lady of Spring has chosen a sharp-edged tool.”

“You are a divine, a trained Inquirer. I didn’t imagine you could, or would, evade your oaths and disciplines. You immobilized me to give yourself time to report, and confer.” Cazaril hesitated. “That I am not presently under arrest should tell me . . . something about that conference, but I’m not at all sure what.”

Umegat studied his hands, spread on his knees. “As a divine, I defer to my superiors. As a saint, I answer to my god. Alone. If He trusts my judgment, so perforce must I. And so must my superiors.” He looked up, and now his gaze was unsettlingly direct. “That the goddess has set your feet on some journey on her behalf—courier—is abundantly plain from Her hour-by-hour preservation of your life. The Temple is at . . . not your service, but Hers. I think I can promise you, none shall interfere with you.”

Cazaril was stung into a wail. “But what am I supposed to be doing?”

Umegat’s voice grew almost apologetic. “Speaking just from my own experience, I would surmise—your daily duties as they come to you.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“Yes. I know.” Umegat’s lips twitched in a dry humor. “So the gods humble the would-be wise, I think.” He added after a moment, “Speaking of daily duties, I must return now to mine. Orico is unwell today. Feel free to visit the menagerie anytime you are so moved, my lord dy Cazaril.”

“Wait—” Cazaril held out a hand as Umegat rose. “Can you tell me—does Orico know of the miracle of the menagerie? Does he understand—does he even know he is accursed? I’ll swear Iselle knows naught of it, nor Teidez.” Royina Ista, on the other hand . . . “Or does the roya just know he feels better for contact with his animals?”

Umegat gave a little nod. “Orico knows. His father Ias told him, on his deathbed. The Temple has made many secret trials to break this curse. The menagerie is the only one that has seemed to do any good.”

“And what of the Dowager Royina Ista? Is she shadowed like Sara?”

Umegat tugged his queue and frowned thoughtfully. “I could better guess if I’d ever met her face-to-face. The dy Baocia family removed her from Cardegoss shortly before I was brought here.”

“Does Chancellor dy Jironal know?”

The frown deepened. “If he does, it was not from my lips. I have often cautioned Orico not to discuss his miracle, but . . .”

“If Orico has kept something from dy Jironal, it would be a first.”

Umegat shrugged acknowledgment, but added, “Given the early disasters in his reign, Orico believes that any action he dares take will redound to the detriment of Chalion. The chancellor is the tongs by which the roya attempts to handle all matters of state without spilling his bane thereupon.”

“Some might wonder if dy Jironal is the answer to the curse, or part of it.”

“The proxy seemed to work at first.”

“And lately?”

“Lately—we’ve redoubled our petitions to the gods for aid.”

“And how have the gods answered?”

“It would seem—by sending you.”

Cazaril sat up in renewed terror, clutching his bedclothes. “No one sent me! I came by chance.”

“I’d like an accounting of those chances, someday soon. When you will, my lord.” Umegat, with a deeply hopeful gaze that frightened Cazaril quite as much as any of his saintly remarks, bowed himself out.

AFTER A FEW MORE HOURS SPENT COWERING UNDER his quilts, Cazaril decided that unless a man could dither himself to death, he wasn’t going to die this afternoon. Or if he was, there was nothing he could do about it. And his stomach was growling in a decidedly unsupernatural fashion. As the chill autumn light faded he crept out of bed, stretched his aching muscles, dressed himself, and went down to dinner.

The Zangre was extremely subdued. With the court plunged into deep mourning, no fêtes or music were offered tonight. Cazaril found the banqueting hall thin of company; neither Iselle’s household nor Teidez’s were present, Royina Sara absented herself, and Roya Orico, his dark shadow clinging about him, ate hastily and departed immediately thereafter.

The reason for Teidez’s absence, Cazaril soon learned, was that Chancellor dy Jironal had taken the royse with him when he rode out on his mission of investigation. Cazaril blinked and fell silent at this news. Surely dy Jironal could not be attempting to continue the seduction by corruption his brother had taken so well in hand? Downright austere by comparison to Dondo, he had not the taste or style for such puerile pleasures. It was impossible to imagine him roistering with a juvenile. Was it too much to hope he might be reversing his strategy for ascendancy over Teidez’s mind, taking the boy up after a true fatherly manner, apprenticing him to statecraft? The young royse was half-sick with idleness as well as dissolution; almost any exposure to men’s work must be medicine for him. More probably, Cazaril thought wearily, the chancellor simply dared not let his future handle upon Chalion out of his grip for an instant.

Lord dy Rinal, seated across from Cazaril, twisted his lips at the half-empty hall and remarked, “Everyone’s deserting. Off to their country estates, if they have ’em, before the snow flies. It’s going to be a gloomy Father’s Day celebration, I warrant. Only the tailors and seamstresses are busy, furbishing up mourning garb.”

Cazaril reached through the ghost-smudge that was hovering next to his plate and washed down the last bite of his repast with a gulp of well-watered wine. Four or five of the revenants had trailed after him to the hall and now clustered about him like cold children crowding a hearth. He had chosen somber clothing himself tonight, automatically; he wondered if he should trouble himself to obtain the full correct lavenders and blacks such as dy Rinal, always fashionable, now sported. Would the abomination locked in his belly take it as hypocrisy, or as a gesture of respect? Would it even know? New-riven from its body, how much of its repulsive nature did Dondo’s soul now retain? These weathered old spirits seemed to watch him from the outside; was Dondo watching him from the inside? He grinned briefly, as an alternative to startling poor dy Rinal with a fit of screaming. He managed a politely inquiring, “Do you stay or go?”

“I go, I think. I’ll ride down with Marchess dy Heron as far as Heron itself, and then cut over the lower passes to home. The old lady might be glad enough of another sword in her party that she’d even invite me to stay.” He took a swallow of wine and lowered his voice. “If not even the Bastard would take Lord Dondo off our hands, you realize he must still be about somewhere. One trusts he’ll just haunt Jironal’s palace where he died, but really, he could be anywhere in Cardegoss. And he was vicious enough before he was murdered; he’s bound to be vengeful now. Slain the night before his wedding, gods!”

Cazaril made a neutral noise.

“The chancellor seems set on calling it death magic, but I shouldn’t wonder if it was poison after all. No way of telling, now the body’s burned, I suppose. Convenient for somebody, that.”

“But he was surrounded by his friends. Surely no one could have administered—were you there?”

Dy Rinal grimaced. “After Lady Pig? No. Thanks be to all her squeals, I was not present at that butchering.” Dy Rinal glanced around, as if afraid a ghost with a grudge might be sneaking up on him even now. That there were half a dozen within his arm’s reach was evidently not apparent to him. Cazaril brushed one away from his face, trying not to let his eyes focus on what, to his companion, must seem empty air.

Ser dy Maroc, the roya’s wardrobe-master, strolled up to their table saying, “Dy Rinal! Have you heard the news from Ibra?” Belatedly, he observed Cazaril leaning with elbows on the board opposite and hesitated, flushing slightly.

Cazaril smiled sourly. “One trusts you’re getting your gossip from Ibra from more reliable sources these days, Maroc?”

Dy Maroc stiffened. “If the Chancellery’s own courier be one, yes. He came in pell-mell while my head tailor was refitting Orico’s mourning garb, that he had to let out by four fingerbreadths—anyway, it’s official. The Heir of Ibra died last week, all suddenly, of the coughing fever in South Ibra. His faction has collapsed, and rushes to make treaty with the old Fox, or save their lives by sacrificing each other. The war in South Ibra is ended.”

“Well!” Dy Rinal sat up and stroked his beard. “Do we call that good news, or bad? Good for poor Ibra, the gods know. But our Orico has chosen the losing side again.”

Dy Maroc nodded. “The Fox is rumored to be most wroth with Chalion, for stirring the pot and keeping it boiling, not that the Heir needed help putting wood on that fire.”

“Perhaps the old roya’s taste for strife shall be buried with his firstborn,” said Cazaril, not too hopefully.

“So the Fox has a new Heir, that child of his age—what was the boy’s name?” said dy Rinal.

“Royse Bergon,” Cazaril supplied.

“Aye,” said dy Maroc. “A young one indeed. And the Fox could drop at any moment, leaving an untried boy on the throne.”

“Not so untried as all that,” said Cazaril. “He’s seen the prosecution of one siege and the breaking of another, riding in his late mother’s train, and survived a civil war. And one would think a son of the Fox could not be stupid.”

“The first one was,” said dy Rinal, unassailably. “To leave his supporters in such naked disarray.”

“One cannot blame death of the coughing fever on a lack of wit,” said Cazaril.

“Assuming it really was the coughing fever,” said dy Rinal, pursing his lips in new suspicion.

“What, d’you think the Fox would poison his own son?” said dy Maroc.

“His agents, man.”

“Well, then, he might have done it sooner, and saved Ibra a world of woe—”

Cazaril smiled thinly, and pushed up from the table, leaving dy Rinal and dy Maroc to their tale-spinning. His wine-sickness was past, and he felt better for his dinner, but the shaky exhaustion that remained was not anything he was accustomed to calling well. In the absence of any summons from the royesse, he made his way back to his bed.

Wearied beyond fear, he fell asleep soon enough. But around midnight, he was brought awake with a gasp. A man’s screams echoed distantly in his head. Screams, and broken weeping, and choked howls of rage—he bolted upright, heart pounding, turning his head to locate the sound. Faint and strange—might it be coming from across the ravine from the Zangre, or down by the river below his window? No one from the castle seemed to respond, no footsteps, or cries of inquiry from the guards . . . In another few moments, Cazaril realized he was not hearing the tormented howls with his ears, any more than he saw the pale smudges floating around his bed with his eyes. And he recognized the voice.

He lay back down, panting and curled around himself, and endured the uproar for another ten minutes. Was the damned soul of Dondo preparing to break free of the Lady’s miracle and haul him off to hell? He was about to leave his bed and run to the menagerie, all in his nightdress, pound on the doors and wake up Umegat and beg the saint for help—could Umegat do anything about this?—when the cries faded again.

It was about the hour of Dondo’s death, he realized. Perhaps the spirit took up some special powers at this time? He couldn’t tell if it had or had not done so last night, he’d been so sodden drunk. One uneasy nightmare had blended in mad fragments with all the others.

It might have been worse, he told himself as his heart gradually slowed again. Dondo might have been given an articulate voice. The thought of Dondo’s ghost made nightly free to speak to him, whether in rage or abuse or vile suggestion, broke his courage as the plain howls had not, and he wept for a little in the sheer terror of the imagining.

Trust the Lady. Trust the Lady. He whispered some incoherent prayers, and slowly regained control of himself. If She had brought him this far for some purpose, surely She would not abandon him now.

A new horrible thought occurred to him, as he told Umegat’s sermon over in his mind. If the goddess only entered the world by Cazaril renouncing his will on Her behalf, could wanting desperately to live, an act of will if ever there was one, be enough to exclude Her, and Her miracle? Her protective encapsulation might pop like a soap bubble, releasing a paradox of death and damnation . . . Following this logic loop around and around was enough to keep him awake for hours, as the night slowly wore itself out. The square of his chamber’s window was growing faintly gray before he dropped again into blessed unconsciousness.

SO IT WAS THAT, FLANKED BY HIS GHOSTLY OUTRIDERS, he climbed the stairs late the following morning to his office antechamber. He felt stupid and eroded from lack of sleep, and he looked forward without enthusiasm to a week’s worth of neglected correspondence and bookkeeping, dropped in disordered piles on his desk from the hour of Iselle’s disastrous betrothal.

He found his ladies up betimes. In the sitting room just past the frontier of his office, all his good new schoolroom maps were spread out on a table. Iselle leaned on her hands, staring down at them. Betriz, her arms folded under her breasts, stood watching over her shoulder and frowning. Both young women, and Nan dy Vrit, who sat sewing, wore the blacks and lavenders of strict formal court mourning, a prudent dissimulation of which Cazaril approved.

As he entered, he saw next to Iselle’s hand a scattering of paper scraps with scribbled lists, some items scratched through, some circled or ticked with checks. Iselle scowled and pointed to a spot on the map marked with a sturdy hat pin, and said over her shoulder to her handmaiden, “But that’s no better than—” She broke off when she saw Cazaril. The dark, invisible cloak still clung about her; only an occasional faint thread of blue light still glinted in its sluggish folds. The ghost-blobs veered violently away from it and, only partly to Cazaril’s relief, vanished from his second sight.

“Are you all right, Lord Caz?” Iselle inquired, looking at him with her brows drawing down. “You don’t look well.”

Cazaril bowed greeting. “My apologies for absenting myself yesterday, Royesse. I was taken with a . . . a colic. It has mostly passed off now.”

Nan dy Vrit, from her seat in the corner, looked up from her sewing with an unfriendly stare to remark, “The chamber woman had it that you were taken with a bad head from drinking and carousing with the stable grooms. She said she saw you come in so drunk after Lord Dondo’s funeral you could barely stagger.”

Conscious of Betriz’s unhappy scrutiny, he said apologetically, “Drinking yes; carousing, no. It won’t happen again, milady.” He added a little dryly, “It didn’t answer anyway.”

“It’s a scandal to the royesse, that her secretary be seen so inebriated that he—”

“Hush, Nan,” Iselle interrupted this lecture impatiently. “Leave be.”

“What’s this, Royesse?” Cazaril gestured at the pin-studded map.

Iselle drew a long breath. “I’ve thought it through. I’ve been thinking for days. As long as I remain unwed, plots will swirl about me. I don’t doubt dy Jironal will produce some other candidate to try to bind me and Teidez to his clan. And other factions—now it’s revealed that Orico would willingly bestow me on a lesser lord, every lesser lord in Chalion will begin badgering him for my hand. My only defense, my only certain refuge, is if I am married already. And not to a lesser lord.”

Cazaril’s brows rose. “I confess, Royesse, my own thoughts have been running something along those lines.”

“And swiftly, swiftly, Cazaril. Before they can come up with someone even more disgusting than Dondo.” Her voice was edged with stress.

“Even our dear chancellor must find that a daunting challenge,” he murmured diffidently, and had the satisfaction of drawing a brief bark of laughter from her. He pursed his lips. “The need is great, I grant you, but the danger is not so instantly pressing as all that. Dy Jironal himself will block the lesser lords for you, I am sure. Your first line of defense must be to block dy Jironal’s next candidate. Although, thinking over his family, it’s not clear to me who he can offer up. His sons are both married, or he might have put forth one of them in place of Dondo. Or offered himself, were he not wed.”

“Wives die,” said Betriz darkly. “Sometimes, they even die conveniently.”

Cazaril shook his head. “Dy Jironal has planned his family alliances with care. His daughters-in-law—his wife, too—are his links to some of the greatest families in Chalion, the daughters and sisters of powerful provincars. I don’t say he wouldn’t seize a vacancy, but he dare not be seen or even suspected of creating one. And his grandsons are toddlers. No, dy Jironal must play a waiting game.”

“What about his nephews?” said Betriz.

Cazaril, after a pause for thought, shook his head again. “Too loose a connection, not controlled enough. He desires a subordinate, not a rival.”

“I decline,” said Iselle through her teeth, “to wait a decade to be wed to a boy fifteen years younger than I am.”

Cazaril glanced involuntarily at Lady Betriz. He himself was fifteen years older than—he thrust the discouraging thought from his mind. The evil barrier between them now was less surmountable than merely that of youth versus age. Life does not wed death.

“We’ve placed a pin in the map for every unwed ruler or heir we can think of between here and Darthaca,” said Betriz.

Cazaril advanced and looked over the map. “What, even the Roknari princedoms?”

“I wanted to be complete,” said Iselle. “Without them, well . . . there weren’t very many choices. I admit, I don’t much like the idea of a Roknari prince. Leaving aside their horrid squared-off religion, their custom of choosing as heir any son at all, whether of true wife or concubine, makes it nearly impossible to tell if one is wedding a future ruler or a future drone.”

“Or a future corpse,” said Cazaril. “Half the victories Chalion ever gained over the Roknari were the result of some embittered failed candidate stabbing his princely half brother in the back.”

“But that leaves only four true Quintarians of rank,” put in Betriz. “The roya of Brajar, Bergon of Ibra, and the twin sons of the high march of Yiss just across the Darthacan border. Who are twelve years old.”

“Not impossible,” said Iselle judiciously, “but March dy Yiss would have no natural reason to ally with Teidez, later, against the Roknari. He shares no borders with the princedoms and does not suffer from their depredations. And he pays fealty to Darthaca, who has no interest in seeing a strong, united alliance of Ibran states arise to put an end to the perpetual war in the north.”

Cazaril was pleased to hear his own analysis coming back to him in the royesse’s mouth; she’d paid more attention during her geography lessons than he’d thought. He smiled encouragingly.

“And besides,” Iselle added crossly, “Yiss has no coastline either.” Her hand drifted unhappily across the map to the east. “My cousin the roya of Brajar is quite old, and they say is grown too sodden with drink to ride to war. And his grandson is too young.”

“Brajar does have good ports,” said Betriz. She added more dubiously, although in the tone of one pointing out an advantage, “I suppose he wouldn’t live very long.”

“Yes, but what help could I be to Teidez as a mere dowager royina? It’s not as though I might tell a, a stepgrandson how to deploy his troops!” Iselle’s hand trailed back to the opposite coast. “And the Fox of Ibra’s eldest son is married, and his younger not the heir, and the country is convulsed with civil strife.”

“Not anymore,” said Cazaril abruptly. “Did no one tell you the news that came yesterday from Ibra? The Heir is dead. Struck down in South Ibra—the coughing fever. No one doubts that young Royse Bergon will take his place. He’s been loyal to his father throughout the whole mess.”

Iselle turned her head and stared at him, her eyes widening. “Really . . . ! How old is Bergon, again? Fifteen, was he not?”

“He must be rising sixteen now, Royesse.”

“Better than fifty-seven!” Her fingers walked lightly up the coast of Ibra along the string of maritime cities to the great port of Zagosur, where they stopped, resting upon a certain pin with a carved mother-of-pearl head. “What do you know of Royse Bergon, Cazaril? Is he well-favored? Did you ever see him when you were in Ibra?”

“Not with my own eyes. They say he’s a handsome boy.”

Iselle shrugged impatiently. “All royses are always described as handsome, unless they’re absolutely grotesque. Then it’s said they have character.”

“I believe Bergon to be reasonably athletic, which argues for at least a pleasantly healthy appearance. They say he has been trained at seamanship.” Cazaril saw the glow of youthful enthusiasm starting in her eyes, and felt constrained to add, “But your brother Orico has been at this half war with the roya of Ibra for the past seven years. The Fox has no love for Chalion.”

Iselle pressed her hands together. “But what better way to end a war than with a marriage treaty?”

“Chancellor dy Jironal is bound to oppose it. Quite aside from wanting you for his own family connection, he wants Teidez to have no ally, now or in the future, stronger than himself.”

“By that reasoning, he must oppose any good match I can suggest.” Iselle leaned over the map again, her hand sweeping in a long arc encompassing Chalion and Ibra both—two-thirds of the lands between the seas. “But if I could bring Teidez and Bergon together . . .” Her palm pressed flat and slowly slid along the north coast across the five Roknari princedoms; pins popped from the paper and scattered. “Yes,” she breathed. Her eyes narrowed, and her jaw tightened. When she again looked up at Cazaril, her eyes were blazing. “I shall put it to my brother Orico at once, before dy Jironal returns. If I can get his word on it, publicly declared, surely even dy Jironal cannot make him take it back?”

“Think it through first, Royesse. Think of all the issues. One drawback is surely the ghastly father-in-law.” Cazaril’s brow wrinkled. “Though I suppose time will remove him. And if anyone is capable of overcoming his emotions in favor of policy, it’s the old Fox.”

She turned from the table to pace hastily back and forth across the chamber, heavy skirts swishing. Her dark aura clung about her.

Royina Sara shared the vilest dregs of Orico’s curse; she must presumably have entered into it upon her marriage to the roya. If Iselle married out of Chalion, would she shed her curse reciprocally, leaving it behind? Was this a way for her to escape the geas? His rising excitement was cut by caution. Or would the Golden General’s old dark destiny follow her across the borders to her new country? He must consult with Umegat, and soon.

Iselle stopped and stared out the window embrasure where she had sat to endure Dondo’s hideous wooing. Her eyes narrowed. At last she said decisively, “I must try. I cannot, will not, leave my fate to drift downstream to another disastrous falls and make no push to steer it. I will petition my royal brother, and at once.”

She wheeled for the door and beckoned sharply, like a general urging on his troops. “Betriz, Cazaril, attend upon me!”

After some time casting about the Zangre they ran Orico to earth, to Cazaril’s surprise, in Royina Sara’s chambers on the top floor of Ias’s Tower. The roya and royina were seated at a small table by a window, playing at blocks-and-dodges together. The simple game, with its carved board and colored marbles, seemed a pastime for children or convalescents, not for the greatest lord and lady in the land . . . not that Orico could be mistaken for a well man by any experienced eye. The royal couple’s eerie shadows seemed merely a redundant underscore to their weary sadness. They played not for idleness, Cazaril realized, but for distraction, diversion from the fear and woe that hedged them all around.

Cazaril was taken aback by Sara’s garb. Instead of the black-and-lavender court mourning that Orico wore, she was dressed all in white, the festival garb of the Bastard’s Day, that intercalary holiday inserted every two years after Mother’s Midsummer to prevent the calendar’s precessing from its proper seasons. The bleached linens were far too light for this weather, and she huddled into a large puffy white wool shawl to combat the chill. She looked dark and thin and sallow in the pale wrappings. Withal, it was an even more edged insult than the colorful gowns and robes she’d hastily donned for Dondo’s funeral. Cazaril wondered if she meant to wear the Bastard’s whites for the whole period of mourning. And if dy Jironal would dare protest.

Iselle curtseyed to her royal brother and sister-in-law, and stood before Orico with eyes bright, hands clasped before her in an attitude of demure femininity belied by the steel in her spine. Cazaril and Lady Betriz, flanking her, also made their courtesies. Orico, turning from the game table, acknowledged his sister’s greeting. He adjusted his paunch in his lap and eyed her uneasily. On closer view, Cazaril could see where his tailor had added a matched panel of lavender brocade beneath the arms to enlarge his tunic’s girth, and the slight discoloration where the sleeve seams had been picked out and resewn. Royina Sara gathered her shawl and withdrew a little into the window seat.

With the barest preamble, Iselle launched into her plea for the roya to open formal negotiations with Ibra for the hand of the Royse Bergon. She emphasized the opportunity to make a bid for peace, thus repairing the breach created by Orico’s ill-fated support of the late Heir, for surely neither Chalion nor exhausted Ibra were prepared to continue the conflict now. She pointed out how appropriate a match in age and rank Bergon was for her own years and station, and the advantage to Orico—she diplomatically did not add and then Teidez—in future years to have a relative and ally in Ibra’s court. She painted a vivid word-picture of the harassment from lesser lords of Chalion vying for her hand that Orico might neatly sidestep by this ploy, a bit of eloquence that caused the roya to vent a wistful sigh.

Nonetheless, Orico began his expected equivocation by seizing on this last point. “But Iselle, your mourning protects you for a time. Not even Martou—I mean, Martou won’t insult the memory of his brother by marrying off Dondo’s bereaved fiancée over his hot ashes.”

Iselle snorted at the bereaved. “Dondo’s ashes will chill soon enough, and what then? Orico, you will never again force me to a husband without my assent—my prior assent, obtained beforehand. I won’t let you.”

“No, no,” Orico agreed hastily, waving his hands. “That . . . that was a mistake, I see it now. I’m sorry.”

Now, there’s an understatement . . .

“I did not mean to insult you, dear sister, or, or the gods.” Orico glanced around a little vaguely, as though afraid an offended god might pounce upon him out of some astral ambuscade at any moment. “I meant well, for you and for Chalion.”

Belatedly, it dawned upon Cazaril that while no one at court but himself and Umegat knew just whose prayers had hurried Dondo . . . well, not out of the world, but out of his life—all knew that the royesse had been praying for rescue. None, Cazaril thought, suspected or accused her of working death magic—of course, neither did they suspect or accuse him—nevertheless, Iselle was here, and Dondo was gone. Every thinking courtier must be unnerved by Dondo’s mysterious death, and some more than a little.

“No marriage shall be offered to you in future without your prior accordance,” said Orico, with uncharacteristic firmness. “That, I promise you upon my own head and crown.”

It was a solemn oath; Cazaril’s brows rose. Orico meant it, apparently. Iselle pursed her lips, then accepted this with a slight, wary nod.

A faint dry breath, puffed through feminine nostrils—Cazaril’s eyes went to Royina Sara. Her face was shadowed by the window embrasure, but her mouth twisted briefly in some small irony at her husband’s words. Cazaril considered what solemn promises Orico had broken to her, and looked away, discomfited.

“By the same token,” Orico skipped to his next evasion like a man crossing stepping-stones on a steam, “our mourning makes it too soon to offer you to Ibra. The Fox may construe an insult in this haste.”

Iselle made a gesture of impatience. “But if we wait, Bergon is likely to be snatched up! The royse is now the Heir, he’s of marriageable age, and his father wants safety on his borders. The Fox is bound to barter him for an ally—a daughter of the high march of Yiss, perhaps, or a rich Darthacan noblewoman, and Chalion will have lost its chance!”

“It’s too soon. Too soon. I don’t disagree that your arguments are good, and may have their day. Indeed, the Fox made diplomatic inquiries for your hand some years ago, I forget for which son, but all was broken off when the troubles in South Ibra erupted. Nothing is fixed. Why, my poor Brajaran mother was betrothed five different times before she was finally wed to Roya Ias. Take patience, calm yourself, and await a more seemly time.”

“I think now is an excellent time. I want to see you make a decision, announce it, and stand by it—before Chancellor dy Jironal returns.”

“Ah, um, yes. And that’s another thing. I cannot possibly take a step of this grave nature without consultation with my chief noble and the other lords in council.” Orico nodded to himself.

“You didn’t consult the other lords the last time. I think you’re most strangely afraid to do anything dy Jironal doesn’t approve. Who is roya in Cardegoss, anyway, Orico dy Chalion or Martou dy Jironal?”

“I—I—I will think on your words, dear sister.” Orico made craven little waving-away motions with his fat hands.

Iselle, after a moment spent staring at him with a burning intensity that made him writhe, accepted this with a small, provisional nod. “Yes, do think on my petition, my lord. I’ll ask you again tomorrow.”

With this promise—or threat—she made courtesy again to Orico and Sara and withdrew, Betriz and Cazaril trailing.

“Tomorrow and every day thereafter?” Cazaril inquired in an undervoice as she sailed down the corridor in a savage rustling of skirts.

“Every day till Orico yields,” she replied through set teeth. “Plan on it, Cazaril.”

WINTRY YELLOW LIGHT SLANTED THROUGH GRAY clouds later that afternoon as Cazaril made his way out of the Zangre to the stable block. He pulled his fine embroidered wool coat around him and drew in his neck like a turtle against the damp, cold wind. When he opened his mouth and exhaled, he could make his breath mist in a little cloud before him. He blew a few puffs at the ghosts that, pale almost to invisibility in the sunlight, bobbed perpetually after him. A damp frost rimed the cobbles beneath his feet. He pushed the menagerie’s heavy door aside just enough to nip within and pulled it shut again immediately thereafter. He stood a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darker interior, and sneezed from the sweet dust of the hay.

The thumbless groom set down a pail, hurried up to him, bowed, and made welcoming noises.

“I have come to see Umegat,” Cazaril told him. The little old man bowed again and beckoned him onward. He led Cazaril down the aisle. The beautiful animals all lurched to the front of their stalls to snort at him, and the sand foxes jumped up and yipped excitedly as he passed.

A stone-walled chamber at the far end proved to be a tack room converted to a work and leisure room for the menagerie’s servants. A small fire burned cheerfully in a fieldstone fireplace, taking the chill off. The faint, pleasant scent of woodsmoke combined with that of leather, metal polish, and soaps. The wool-stuffed cushions on the chairs to which the groom gestured him were faded and worn, and the old worktable was stained and scarred. But the room was swept, and the glazed windows, one on either side of the fireplace, had the little round panes set in their leads polished clean. The groom made noises and shuffled out again.

In a few minutes, Umegat entered, wiping his hands dry on a cloth and straightening his tabard. “Welcome, my lord,” he said softly. Cazaril felt suddenly uncertain of his etiquette, whether to stand as for a superior or sit as for a servant. There was no court Roknari grammatical mode for secretary to saint. He sat up and half bowed from the waist, awkwardly, by way of compromise. “Umegat.”

Umegat closed the door, assuring privacy. Cazaril leaned forward, clasping his hands upon the tabletop, and spoke with the urgency of patient to physician. “You see the ghosts of the Zangre. Do you ever hear them?”

“Not normally. Have you?” Umegat pulled out a chair and seated himself at right angles to Cazaril.

“Not these—” He batted away the most persistent one, which had followed him inside. Umegat pursed his lips and flipped his cloth at it, and it flitted off. “Dondo’s.” Cazaril described last night’s internal uproar. “I thought he was trying to break out. Can he succeed? If the goddess’s grip fails?”

“I am certain no ghost can overpower a god,” said Umegat.

“That’s . . . not quite an answer.” Cazaril brooded. Perhaps Dondo and the demon meant to kill him from sheer exhaustion. “Can you at least suggest a way to shut him up? Putting my head under the pillow was no help at all.”

“There is a kind of symmetry to it,” observed Umegat slowly. “Outer ghosts that you may see but not hear, inner ghosts that you may hear but not see . . . if the Bastard has a hand in it, it may have something to do with maintaining balance. In any case, I am sure your preservation was no accident and would not be accidentally withdrawn.”

Cazaril absorbed this for a moment. Daily duties, eh. Today’s had brought some curious turns. He spoke now as comrade to comrade. “Umegat, listen, I’ve had an idea. We know the curse has followed the House of Chalion’s male line, Fonsa to Ias to Orico. Yet Royina Sara wears nearly as dark a shadow as Orico does, and she is no spawn of Fonsa’s loins. She must have married into the curse, yes?”

The fine lines of Umegat’s face deepened with his frown. “Sara already bore the shadow when I first came, years ago, but I suppose . . . yes, it must have been so.”

“Ista likewise, presumably?”

“Presumably.”

“So—could Iselle marry out of the curse? Shed it with her marriage vows, when she leaves her family of birth behind and enters into the family of her husband? Or would the curse follow her to taint them both?”

Umegat’s brows went up. “I don’t know.”

“But you don’t know that it’s impossible? I was thinking that it might be a way to salvage . . . something.”

Umegat sat back. “Possibly. I don’t know. It was never a ploy to consider, for Orico.”

“I need to know, Umegat. Royesse Iselle is pushing Orico to open negotiations for her marriage out of Chalion.”

“Chancellor dy Jironal will surely not allow that.”

“I would not underestimate her powers of persuasion. She is not another Sara.”

“Neither was Sara, once. But you are right. Oh, my poor Orico, to be pressed between two such grinding stones.”

Cazaril bit his lip, and paused a long time before venturing his next query. “Umegat . . . you’ve been observing this court for many years. Was dy Jironal always so poisonous a peculator, or has the curse slowly been corrupting him, too? Did the curse draw such a man to his position of power, or would any man trying to serve the House of Chalion become so corroded, in time?”

“You ask very interesting questions, Lord Cazaril.” Umegat’s graying brows drew down in thought. “I wish I had better answers. Martou dy Jironal was always forcible, intelligent, able. We shall leave aside consideration of his younger brother, who made his reputation as a strong arm in the field, not a strong head in the court. When he first took up the post of chancellor I would have judged the elder dy Jironal no more susceptible to the temptations of pride and greed than any other high lord of Chalion with a clan to provide for.”

Faint enough praise, that. And yet . . .

“Yet I think . . .” Umegat seemed to continue Cazaril’s very thought, his eyes rising to meet his guest’s, “the curse has done him no good either.”

“So . . . getting rid of dy Jironal is not the solution to Orico’s woes? Another such man, perhaps worse, would simply rise in his place?”

Umegat opened his hands. “The curse takes a hundred forms, twisting each good thing that should be Orico’s according to the weaknesses of its nature. A wife grown barren instead of fertile. A chief advisor corrupt instead of loyal. Friends fickle instead of true, food that sickens instead of strengthening, and on and on.”

A secretary-tutor grown cowardly and foolish instead of brave and wise? Or maybe just fey and mad . . . If any man who came within the curse’s ambit was vulnerable, was he destined to become Iselle’s plague, as dy Jironal was Orico’s? “And Teidez, and Iselle—must all her choices fall out as ill as Orico’s, or does he bear a special burden, being the roya?”

“I think the curse has grown worse for Orico over time.” The Roknari’s gray eyes narrowed. “You have asked me a dozen questions, Lord Cazaril. Allow me to ask you one. How came you into the service of Royesse Iselle?”

Cazaril opened his mouth and sat back, his mind jumping first to the day the Provincara had ambushed him with her offer of employment. But no, before that came . . . and before that came . . . He found himself instead telling Umegat of the day a soldier of the Daughter astride a nervy horse had dropped a gold coin in the mud, and how he had arrived in Valenda. Umegat brewed tea at the little fire and pushed a steaming mug in front of Cazaril, who paused only to lubricate his drying throat. Cazaril described how Iselle had discomfited the crooked judge on the Daughter’s Day, and, at length, how they had all come to Cardegoss.

Umegat pulled on his queue. “Do you think your steps were fated from that far back? Disturbing. But the gods are parsimonious, and take their chances where they can find them.”

“If the gods are making this path for me, then where is my free will? No, it cannot be!”

“Ah.” Umegat brightened at this thorny theological point. “I have had another thought on such fates, that denies neither gods nor men. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road. And only those arrive who choose to.”

“But am I the first to arrive, or the last?”

“Well,” said Umegat dryly, “I can promise you you’re not the first.”

Cazaril grunted understanding. After a little time spent digesting this, he said suddenly, “But if the gods have given you to Orico, and me to Iselle—though I think Someone has made a holy mistake—who is given for the protection of Teidez? Shouldn’t there be three of us? A man of the Brother, surely, though whether tool or saint or fool I know not—or have all the boy’s hundred destined protectors fallen by the roadside, one by one? Maybe the man is just not here yet.” A new thought robbed Cazaril of breath. “Maybe it was supposed to have been dy Sanda.” He leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. “If I stay here talking theology with you much longer, I swear I’ll end up drinking myself blind again, just to make my brain stop spinning round and round inside my skull.”

“Addiction to drink is actually a fairly common hazard, among divines,” said Umegat.

“I begin to see why.” Cazaril tilted back his head to catch the last trickle of tea, grown cold in his cup, and set it down. “Umegat . . . if I must ask of every action not only if it is wise or good, but also if it’s the one I’m supposed to choose, I shall go mad. Madder. I’ll end up curled in a corner not doing anything at all, except maybe mumbling and weeping.”

Umegat chuckled—cruelly, Cazaril thought—but then shook his head. “You cannot outguess the gods. Hold to virtue—if you can identify it—and trust that the duty set before you is the duty desired of you. And that the talents given to you are the talents you should place in the gods’ service. Believe that the gods ask for nothing back that they have not first lent to you. Not even your life.”

Cazaril rubbed his face, and inhaled. “Then I shall bend all my efforts to promoting this marriage of Iselle’s, to break the hold of the curse upon her. I must trust my reason, or why else did the goddess choose a reasonable man for Iselle’s guardian?” Though he added under his breath, “At least, I used to be a reasonable man . . .” He nodded, far more firmly than he felt, and pushed back his chair. “Pray for me, Umegat.”

“Every hour, my lord.”

IT WAS GROWING DARK WHEN LADY BETRIZ BROUGHT a taper into Cazaril’s office and drifted about for a moment lighting his reading candles in their glass vases. He smiled and nodded thanks. She smiled back and blew out her taper, but then paused, not yet returning to the women’s chambers. She stood, Cazaril observed, in the same spot where they had parted the night of Dondo’s death.

“Things seem to be settling down a little now, thank the gods,” she remarked.

“Yes. A little.” Cazaril laid down his quill.

“I begin to believe all will be well.”

“Yes.” His stomach cramped. No.

A long pause. He picked up his quill again, and dipped it, although he had nothing more to write.

“Cazaril, must you believe you are about to die in order to bring yourself to kiss a lady?” she demanded abruptly.

He ducked his head, flushing, and cleared his throat. “My deepest apologies, Lady Betriz. It won’t happen again.”

He dared not look up, lest she try anew to break through his fragile barriers. Lest she succeed. Oh, Betriz, do not sacrifice your dignity to my futility!

Her voice grew stiff. “I’m very sorry to hear that, Castillar.”

He kept his eyes on his ledger as her footsteps retreated.

* * *

SEVERAL DAYS PASSED, AS ISELLE CONTINUED HER campaign upon Orico. Several nights passed, made ghastly for Cazaril by the howls of Dondo’s soul in its private torment. This intestinal visitation did indeed prove to be nightly, a quarter of an hour reprising the terror of that death. Cazaril could not fall to sleep before the midnight interlude, in sick apprehension, nor for long after it, in shaken resonance, and his face grew gray with fatigue. The blurry old phantasms began to seem pleasant pets by comparison. There was no way he could drink enough wine, nightly, to sleep through it, so he set himself to endure.

Orico endured his sister’s visitations with less fortitude. He took to avoiding her in increasingly bizarre ways, but she broke in upon him anyway, in chamber, kitchen, and once, to Nan dy Vrit’s scandal, his steam bath. The day he rode out to his hunting lodge in the oak woods at dawn, Iselle followed promptly after breakfast. Cazaril was relieved to note that his own spectral retinue fell behind as they rode out of the Zangre, as though bound to their place of death.

It was clear that the fast gallop was an inexpressible joy to Iselle, as she shook out the knots and strains of her trammeled existence in the castle. A day in the saddle in the crisp early-winter air, going and returning from an otherwise futile interview, brightened her eye and put color in her cheeks. Lady Betriz was no less invigorated. The four Baocian guards told off to ride with them kept up, but only just, laboring along with their horses; Cazaril concealed agony. He passed blood again that evening, which he’d not done for some days, and Dondo’s nightly serenade proved especially shattering because, for the first time, Cazaril’s inward ear could make out words in the cries. They weren’t words that made any sense, but they were distinguishable. Would more follow?

Dreading another such ride, Cazaril wearily climbed the stairs to Iselle’s chambers late the next morning. He had just eased himself stiffly into his chair at his desk and taken up his account book, when Royina Sara appeared, accompanied by two of her ladies. She wafted past Cazaril in a cloud of white wool. He scrambled to his feet in surprise and bowed deeply; she acknowledged his existence with a faint, faraway nod.

A flurry of feminine voices in the forbidden chambers beyond announced her visit to her sister-in-law. Both the royina’s ladies-in-waiting and Nan dy Vrit were exiled to the sitting room, where they sat sewing and quietly gossiping. After about half an hour, Royina Sara came out again and crossed through Cazaril’s office antechamber with the same unsmiling abstraction.

Betriz followed shortly. “The royesse bids you attend upon her in her sitting chamber,” she told Cazaril. Her black eyebrows were crimped tight with worry. Cazaril rose at once and followed her inside.

Iselle sat in a carved chair, her hands clenched upon its arms, pale and breathing heavily. “Infamous! My brother is infamous, Cazaril!” she told him as he made his bow and pulled a stool up to her knee.

“My lady?” he inquired, and let himself down as carefully as he could. Last night’s belly cramp still lingered, and stabbed him if he moved too quickly.

“No marriage without my consent, aye, he spoke that truly enough—but none without dy Jironal’s consent, either! Sara has whispered it to me. After his brother’s death, but before he rode out of Cardegoss to seek the murderer, the chancellor closeted himself with my brother and persuaded him to make a codicil to his will. In the event of Orico’s death, the chancellor is made regent for my brother Teidez—”

“I believe that arrangement has been known for quite some time, Royesse. There is a regency council set up to advise him, as well. The provincars of Chalion would not let that much power pass to one of their number without a check.”

“Yes, yes, I knew that, but—”

“The codicil does not attempt to abolish the council, does it?” asked Cazaril in alarm. “That would set the lords in an uproar.”

“No, that part is left all as it was. But formerly, I was to be the ward of my grandmother and my uncle the provincar of Baocia. Now, I am to be transferred to dy Jironal’s own wardship. There is no council to check that! And listen, Cazaril! The term of his guardianship is set to be until I marry, and permission for my marriage is left entirely in his hands! He can keep me unwed till I die of old age, if he chooses!”

Cazaril concealed his unease and held up a soothing hand. “Surely not. He must die of old age long before you. And well before that, when Teidez comes to his man’s estate and the full powers of the royacy, he can free you with a royal decree.”

“Teidez’s majority is set at twenty-five years, Cazaril!”

A decade ago, Cazaril would have shared her outrage at this lengthy term. Now it sounded more like a good idea. But not, granted, with dy Jironal in the saddle instead.

“I would be almost twenty-eight years old!”

Twelve more years for the curse to work upon her, and within her . . . no, it was not good by any measure.

“He could dismiss you from my household instantly!”

You have another Patroness, who has not chosen to dismiss me yet. “I grant you have cause for concern, Royesse, but don’t borrow trouble before its time. None of this matters while Orico lives.”

“He is not well, Sara says.”

“He is not very fit,” Cazaril agreed cautiously. “But he’s not by any means an old man. He’s barely more than forty.”

By the expression on Iselle’s face, she found that quite aged enough. “He is more . . . not-well than he appears. Sara says.”

Cazaril hesitated. “Is she that intimate with him, to know this? I had thought them estranged.”

“I don’t understand them.” Iselle knuckled her eyes. “Oh, Cazaril, it was true what Dondo told me! I thought, later, that it might have been just a horrid lie to frighten me. Sara was so desperate for a child, she agreed to let dy Jironal try, when Orico . . . could not, anymore. Martou was not so bad, she said. He was at least courteous. It was only when he could not get her with child either that his brother cajoled him to let him into the venture. Dondo was dreadful, and took pleasure in her humiliation. But Cazaril, Orico knew. He helped persuade Sara to this outrage. I don’t understand, because Orico surely does not hate Teidez so much he’d wish to set dy Jironal’s bastard in his place.”

“No.” And yes. A son of dy Jironal and Sara would not be a descendant of Fonsa the Fairly-wise. Orico must have reasoned that such a child might grow up to free the royacy of Chalion from the Golden General’s death curse. A desperate measure, but possibly an effective one.

“Royina Sara,” Iselle added, her mouth crooking, “says if dy Jironal finds Dondo’s murderer, she plans to pay for his funeral, pension his family, and have perpetual prayers sung for him in the temple of Cardegoss.”

“That’s good to know,” said Cazaril faintly. Although he had no family to pension. He hunched over a little and smiled to hide a grimace of pain. So, not even Sara, who had filled Iselle’s maiden ears with details of shocking intimacy, had told her of the curse. And he was certain now that Sara, too, knew of it. Orico, Sara, dy Jironal, Umegat, probably Ista, possibly even the Provincara, and not one had chosen to burden these children with knowledge of the dark cloud that hung over them. Who was he to betray that implicit conspiracy of silence?

No one told me, either. Do I thank them now for their consideration? When, then, did Teidez’s and Iselle’s protectors plan to let them know of the geas that wrapped them round? Did Orico expect to tell them on his deathbed, as he’d been told by his father Ias?

Had Cazaril the right to tell Iselle secrets that her natural guardians chose to conceal?

Was he prepared to explain to her just how he had found it all out?

He glanced at Lady Betriz, seated now on another stool and anxiously watching her distressed royal mistress. Even Betriz, who knew quite well that he had attempted death magic, did not know that he had succeeded.

“I don’t know what to try next,” moaned Iselle. “Orico is useless.”

Could Iselle escape this curse without ever having to know of it? He took a deep breath, for what he was about to say skirted treason. “You could take steps to arrange your marriage yourself.”

Betriz stirred and sat up, her eyes widening at him.

“What, in secret?” said Iselle. “From my royal brother?”

“Certainly in secret from his chancellor.”

“Is that legal?”

Cazaril blew out his breath. “A marriage, contracted and consummated, cannot readily be set aside even by a roya. If a sufficiently large camp of Chalionese were persuaded to support you in it—and a considerable faction of opposition to dy Jironal exists ready-made—setting it aside would be rendered still harder.” And if she were got out of Chalion and placed under the protection of, say, as shrewd a father-in-law as the Fox of Ibra, she might leave curse and faction both behind altogether. Arranging the matter so that she didn’t simply trade being a powerless hostage in one court for being a powerless hostage in another was the hard part. But at least an uncursed hostage, eh?

“Ah!” Iselle’s eyes lit with approval. “Cazaril, can it be done?”

“There are practical difficulties,” he admitted. “All of which have practical solutions. The most critical is to discover a man you can trust to be your ambassador. He must have the wit to gain you the strongest possible position in negotiation with Ibra, the suppleness to avoid offending Chalion, nerve to pass in disguise across uneasy borders, strength for travel, loyalty to you and you alone, and courage in your cause that must not break. A mistake in this selection would be fatal.” Possibly literally.

She pressed her hands together, and frowned. “Can you find me such a man?”

“I will bend my thoughts to it, and look about me.”

“Do so, Lord Cazaril,” she breathed. “Do so.”

Lady Betriz said, in an oddly dry voice, “Surely you need not look far.”

“It cannot be me.” With a swallow, he converted I could fall dead at your feet at any moment to, “I dare not leave you here without protection.”

“We shall all think on it,” said Iselle firmly.

THE FATHER’S DAY FESTIVITIES PASSED QUIETLY. CHILL rain dampened the celebrations in Cardegoss, and kept many from the Zangre from attending the municipal procession, though ORICO went as a royal duty and as a result contracted a head cold. He turned this to account by taking to his bed and avoiding everyone thereby. The Zangre’s denizens, still in black and lavender for Lord Dondo, kept a sober Father’s Feast, with sacred music but no dancing.

The icy rain continued through the week. Cazaril, one sodden afternoon, was combining practical application with tutorial by teaching Betriz and Iselle how to keep accounts, when a crisp rap on the chamber door overrode a page’s diffident voice announcing, “The March dy Palliar begs to see my lord dy Cazaril.”

“Palli!” Cazaril turned in his chair, and levered himself to his feet with a hand on the table. Bright delight flooded both his ladies’ faces with sudden energy, driving out the ennui. “i wasn’t expecting you in Cardegoss so soon!”

“Nor was I.” Palli bowed to the women and favored Cazaril with a twisted grin. He dropped a coin in the page’s hand and jerked his head; the boy bent double, in a gradation that indicated deep approval of the amount of the largesse, and scampered off.

Palli continued, “I took only two officers and rode hard; my troop from Palliar follows at a pace that will not destroy horses.” He glanced around the chamber and shrugged his broad shoulders. “Goddess forfend! I didn’t think I was speaking prophecy, last time I was here. Gives me a worse chill than this miserable rain.” He cast off a water-spotted woolen cloak, revealing the blue-and-white garb of an officer of the daughter’s order, and ran a rueful hand through the bright drops beading in his dark hair. He clasped hands with Cazaril, and added, “Bastard’s demons, Caz, you look terrible!”

Cazaril could not, alas, respond to this with a very well put. He instead turned off the remark with a mumble of, “It’s the weather, I suppose. It makes everyone dull and drab.”

Palli stood back and stared him up and down. “Weather? When last I saw you, your skin was not the color of moldy dough, you didn’t have black rings around your eyes like a striped rock-rat, and, and, you looked pretty fit, not—pale, pinched, and potbellied.” Cazaril straightened up, indignantly sucking in his aching gut, as Palli jerked a thumb at him and added, “Royesse, you should get your secretary to a physician.”

Iselle stared at Cazaril in sudden doubt, her hand going to her mouth, as if really looking him for the first time in weeks. Which, he supposed, she was; her attentions had been thoroughly absorbed by her own troubles through these late disasters. Betriz looked from one of them to the other, and set her teeth on her lower lip.

“I don’t need to see a physician,” said Cazaril firmly, loudly, and quickly. Or any other such interrogator, dear gods.

“So all men say, in terror of the lancet and the purgative.” Palli waved away this stung protest. “The last one of my sergeants who developed saddle boils, I had to march in to the old leech-handler at sword’s point. Don’t listen to him, Royesse. Cazaril”—his face sobered, and he made an apologetic half bow to Iselle—“May I speak to you privately for a moment? I promise I shall not keep him from you long, Royesse. I cannot linger.”

Gravely, Iselle granted her royal permission. Cazaril, quick to catch the undertone in Palli’s voice, led him not to his office antechamber but all the way down the stairs to his own chamber. The corridor was empty, happily. He closed his heavy door firmly behind them, to thwart human eavesdroppers. The senile spirit smudges kept their confidences.

Cazaril took the chair, the better to conceal his lack of grace in movement. Palli sat on the edge of the bed, folded his cloak beside him, and clasped his hands loosely between his knees.

“The daughter’s courier to Palliar must have made excellent time despite the winter muds,” said Cazaril, counting days in his head.

Palli’s dark brows rose. “You know of that already? I’d thought it a, ah, quite private call to conclave. Though it will become obvious soon enough, as the other lord dedicats arrive in Cardegoss.”

Cazaril shrugged. “I have my sources.”

“I don’t doubt it. And so have I mine.” Palli shook his finger at him. “You are the only intelligencer in the zangre that I would trust, at present. What, under the Gods’ eyes, has been happening here at court? The most lurid and garbled tales are circulating regarding our late Holy General’s sudden demise. And delightful as the picture is, somehow I don’t really think he was carried off bodily by a flight of demons with blazing wings called down by the Royesse Iselle’s prayers.”

“Ah . . . not exactly. He just choked to death in the middle of a drinking fest, the night before his wedding.”

“On his poisonous, lying tongue, one would wish.”

“Very nearly.”

Palli sniffed. “The lord dedicats whom Lord Dondo put in a fury—who are not only all the ones he failed to buy outright, but also those who’ve grown ashamed of their purchase since—have taken his taking-off as a sign the wheel has turned. As soon as our quorum arrives in Cardegoss, we mean to steal a march on the chancellor and present our own candidate for Holy General to Orico. Or perhaps a slate of three acceptable men, from which the roya might choose.”

“That would likely go down better. It’s a delicate balance between . . .” Cazaril cut off, loyalty and treason. “Too, dy jironal has his own powers in the temple, as well as in the Zangre. You don’t want this infighting to turn too ugly.”

“Even dy Jironal would not dare disrupt the temple by setting soldiers of the son upon soldiers of the daughter,” said Palli confidently.

“Mm,” said Cazaril.

“At the same time, some of the lord dedicats—naming no names right now—want to go farther. maybe assemble and present evidence of enough of both the Jironals’ bribes, threats, peculations, and malfeasances to Orico that it would force him to dismiss dy Jironal as chancellor. make the Roya take a stand.”

Cazaril rubbed his nose, and said warningly, “Forcing Orico to stand would be like trying to build a tower out of custard. I don’t recommend it. Nor will he readily be parted from dy Jironal. The Roya relies on him . . . more deeply than I can explain. Your evidence would need to be utterly overwhelming.”

“Yes, which is part of what brings me to you.” Palli leaned forward intently. “Would you be willing to repeat, under oath before the daughter’s conclave, the tale you told me in Valenda about how the Jironals sold you to the galleys?”

Cazaril hesitated. “I have only my word to offer as proof, Palli. too weak to topple dy Jironal, I assure you.”

“Not alone, no. But it might be just the coin to tip the scale, the straw to light the fire.”

Just the straw to stand out from all the others? Did he want to be known as the pivot of this plot? Cazaril’s lips screwed up in dismay.

“And you’re a man of reputation,” Palli went on persuasively.

Cazaril jerked. “No good one, surely . . . !”

“What, everyone knows of Royesse Iselle’s clever secretary, the man who keeps his own counsel—and hers—the Bastion of Gotorget—utterly indifferent to wealth—”

“No, I’m not,” Cazaril assured him earnestly. “I just dress badly. I quite like wealth.”

“And possessing the Royesse’s total confidence. And don’t pretend a courtier’s greed to me—with my own eyes I saw you turn down three rich roknari bribes to betray gotorget, the last while you were starving near to death, and I can produce living witnesses to back me.”

“well, of course I didn’t—”

“your voice would be listened to in council, Caz!”

Cazaril sighed. “I . . . I’ll think about it. I have nearer duties. Say that I’ll speak in the sealed session if and only if you think my testimony would be truly needed. Temple internal politics are no business of mine.” A twinge in his gut made him regret that word choice. I fear I am afflicted with the goddess’s own internal politics, just now.

Palli’s happy nod claimed this as a firmer assent than Cazaril quite wished. He rose, thanked Cazaril, and took his leave.

Two afternoons later, Cazaril was sitting unguardedly at his worktable mending his pens when a page of the Zangre entered his antechamber and announced, “Here is Dedicat Rojeras, in obedience to the order of the Royesse Iselle, m’lord.”

Rojeras was a man of about forty, with sandy red hair receding a little from his forehead, freckles, and keen blue eyes. The man’s trade was recognizable by the green robes of a lay dedicat of Cardegoss’s Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy that swung at his brisk step, and his rank by the master’s braid sewn over his shoulder. Cazaril knew at once that none of his ladies could be the quarry, or the Mother’s Order would have sent a woman physician. He stiffened in alarm, but nodded politely. He rose and turned to convey the message to the inner chambers only to find Lady Betriz and the royesse already at the door, smiling unsurprised greetings to the man.

Betriz dropped a half curtsey in exchange for the dedicat’s deep bow, and said, “This is the man I told you about, Royesse. The Mother’s senior divine says he has made a special study of wasting diseases, and has apprentices who’ve traveled from all over Chalion to be taught by him!”

So, Lady Betriz’s excursion to the temple yesterday had included more than prayers and charity offerings. Iselle had less to learn about court conspiracies than Cazaril had thought. She’d certainly smuggled this past him smoothly enough. He was ambushed, and by his own ladies. He smiled tightly, swallowing his fear. The man had none of the luminous signs of second sight about him; what could he tell from Cazaril’s mere body?

Iselle looked the physician over and nodded satisfaction. “Dedicat Rojeras, please examine my secretary and report back to me.”

“Royesse, I don’t need to see a physician!” And I most especially don’t need a physician to see me.

“Then all we shall waste is a trifle of time,” Iselle countered, “which the gods give us each day all the same. Upon pain of my displeasure, I order you to go with him, Cazaril.” There was no mistaking the determination in her voice.

Damn Palli, for not only putting this into her head, but teaching her how to block his escape. Iselle was too quick a study. Still . . . the physician would either diagnose a miracle, or he would not. If he did, Cazaril could call for Umegat, and let the saint, with his undoubted high connections to the Temple, deal with it. And if not, what harm was in it?

Cazaril bowed obedient, if stiffly offended, assent, and led his unwelcome visitor downstairs to his bedchamber. Lady Betriz followed, to see that her royal mistress’s orders were carried out. She offered him a quick apologetic smile, but her eyes were apprehensive as Cazaril closed his door upon her.

Shut in with Cazaril, the physician made him sit by the window while he felt his pulse and peered into his eyes, ears, and throat. He bade Cazaril make water, which he sniffed and studied in a glass tube held up to the light. He inquired after Cazaril’s bowels, and Cazaril reluctantly admitted to the blood. Then Cazaril was required to undress and lie down, and suffer to have his heart and breathing listened to by the man’s ear pressed to his chest, and be poked and prodded all over his body by the cool, quick fingers. Cazaril had to explain how he came by his flogging scars; Rojeras’s comments upon them were limited to some hair-raising suggestions of how he might rid Cazaril of his remaining adhesions, should Cazaril desire it and gather the nerve. Withal, Cazaril thought he would prefer to wait and fall off another horse, and said so, which only made Rojeras chuckle.

Rojeras’s smile faded as he returned to a more careful, and deeper, probing of Cazaril’s belly, feeling and leaning this way and that. “Pain here?”

Cazaril, determined to pass this off, said firmly, “No.”

“How about when I do this?”

Cazaril yelped.

“Ah. Some pain, then.” More poking. More wincing. Rojeras paused for a time, his fingertips just resting on Cazaril’s belly, his gaze abstracted. Then he seemed to shake himself awake. He reminded Cazaril of Umegat.

Rojeras still smiled as Cazaril dressed himself again, but his eyes were shadowed with thought.

Cazaril offered encouragingly, “Speak, Dedicat. I am a man of reason, and will not fall to pieces.”

“Is it so? Good.” Rojeras took a breath and said plainly, “My lord, you have a most palpable tumor.”

“Is . . . that it,” said Cazaril, gingerly seating himself again in his chair.

Rojeras looked up swiftly. “This does not surprise you?”

Not as much as my last diagnosis did. Cazaril thought longingly of what a relief it would be to learn that his recurring belly cramp was such a natural, normal lethality. Alas, he was quite certain that most people’s tumors didn’t scream obscenities at them in the middle of the night. “I have had reasons to think something was not right. But what does this mean? What do you think will happen?” He kept his voice as neutral as possible.

“Well . . .” Rojeras sat on the edge of Cazaril’s vacated bed and laced his fingers together. “There are so many kinds of these growths. Some are diffuse, some knotted or encapsulated, some kill swiftly, some sit there for years and hardly seem to give trouble at all. Yours seems to be encapsulated, which is hopeful. There is one common sort, a kind of cyst that fills with liquid, that one woman I cared for held for over twelve years.”

“Oh,” said Cazaril, and produced a heartened smile.

“It grew to over a hundred pounds by the time she died,” the physician went on. Cazaril recoiled, but Rojeras continued blithely, “And there is another, a most interesting one that I have only seen twice in my years of study—a round mass that, when opened, proved to contain knots of flesh with hair and teeth and bones. One was in a woman’s belly, which almost made sense, but another was in a man’s leg. I theorize that they were engendered by an escaped demon, trying to grow to human form. If the demon had succeeded, I posit that it might have chewed its way out and entered the world in fleshly form, which would surely have been an abomination. I have for long wished to find such another one in a patient who was still alive, that I might study it and see if my theory is so.” He eyed Cazaril in speculation.

With the greatest effort, Cazaril kept himself from jolting up and screaming. He glanced down at his swollen belly in terror, and carefully away. He had thought his affliction spiritual, not physical. It had not occurred to him that it could be both at once. This was an intrusion of the supernatural into the solid that seemed all too plausible, given his case. He choked out, “Do they grow to a hundred pounds, too?”

“The two I excised were much smaller,” Rojeras assured him.

Cazaril looked up in sudden hope. “You can cut them out, then?”

“Oh—only from dead persons,” said the physician apologetically.

“But, but . . . might it be done?” If a man were brave enough to lie down and offer himself in cold blood to razor-edged steel . . . if the abomination could be carved out with the brutal speed of an amputation . . . Was it possible to physically excise a miracle, if that miracle were in fact made flesh?

Rojeras shook his head. “On an arm or a leg, maybe. But this . . . You were a soldier—you’ve surely seen what happens with dirty belly wounds. Even if you chanced to survive the shock and pain of the cutting, the fever would kill you within a few days.” His voice grew more earnest. “I have tried it three times, and only because my patients threatened to kill themselves if I would not try. They all died. I don’t care to kill any more good people that way. Do not tease and torment yourself with such desperate impossibilities. Take what you can of life meantime, and pray.”

It was praying that got me into this—or this into me . . . “Do not tell the royesse!”

“My lord,” said the physician gravely, “I must.”

“But I must not—not now—she must not dismiss me to my bed! I cannot leave her side!” Cazaril’s voice rose in panic.

Rojeras’s brows rose. “Your loyalty commends you, Lord Cazaril. Calm yourself! There is no need for you to take to your bed before you feel the need. Indeed, such light duties as may come your way in her service may occupy your mind and help you to compose your soul.”

Cazaril breathed deeply, and decided not to disabuse Rojeras of his pleasant illusions about service to the House of Chalion. “As long as you make it clear that I am not to be exiled from my post.”

“As long as you grasp that this is not a license to exert yourself unduly,” Rojeras returned sternly. “You are plainly in need of more rest than you have allowed yourself.”

Cazaril nodded hasty agreement, trying to look at once biddable and energetic.

“There is one other important thing,” Rojeras added, stirring as if to take his leave but not yet rising. “I only ask this because, as you say, you are a man of reason, and I think you might understand.”

“Yes?” said Cazaril warily.

“Upon your death—long delayed, we must pray—may I have your note of hand saying I might cut out your tumor for my collection?”

“You collect such horrors?” Cazaril grimaced. “Most men content themselves with paintings, or old swords, or ivory carvings.” Offense struggled with curiosity, and lost. “Um . . . how do you keep them?”

“In jars of wine spirits.” Rojeras smiled, a faint embarrassed flush coloring his fair skin. “I know it sounds gruesome, but I keep hoping . . . if only I learn enough, someday I will understand, someday I will be able to find some way to keep these things from killing people.”

“Surely they are the gods’ dark gifts, and we cannot in piety resist them?”

“We resist gangrene, by amputation, sometimes. We resist the infection of the jaw, by drawing out the bad tooth. We resist fevers, by applications of heat and cold, and good care. For every cure, there must have been a first time.” Rojeras fell silent. After a moment he said, “It is clear that the Royesse Iselle holds you in much affection and esteem.”

Cazaril, not knowing quite how to respond to this, replied, “I have served her since last spring, in Valenda. I had formerly served in her grandmother’s household.”

“She is not given to hysterics, is she? Highborn women are sometimes . . .” Rojeras gave a little shrug, in place of saying something rude.

“No,” Cazaril had to admit. “None of her household are. Quite the reverse.” He added, “But surely you don’t have to tell the ladies, and distress them, so . . . so soon?”

“Of course I do,” said the physician, although in a gentled tone. He rose to his feet. “How can the royesse choose good actions without good knowledge?”

An all too cogent point. Cazaril chewed on it in embarrassment as he followed the dedicat back upstairs.

Betriz leaned out onto the corridor at the sound of their approaching steps. “Is he going to be all right?” she demanded of Rojeras.

Rojeras held up a hand. “A moment, my lady.”

They made their way into the royesse’s sitting chamber, where Iselle waited bolt upright on the carved chair, her hands tight in her lap. She accepted Rojeras’s bow with a nod. Cazaril didn’t want to watch, but he did want to know what was said, and so sank into the chair Betriz anxiously dragged up for him, and to which Iselle pointed. Rojeras remained standing in the presence of the royesse.

“My lady,” Rojeras said to Iselle, bowing again as if in apology for his bluntness, “your secretary is afflicted with a tumor in his gut.”

Iselle stared at him in shock. Betriz’s face drained of all expression. Iselle swallowed, and said, “He’s not . . . not dying, surely?” She glanced fearfully at Cazaril.

Rojeras, losing his grip on his stated principles of forthrightness in the face of this, retreated briefly into courtly dissimulation. “Death comes to all men, variously. It is beyond my skills to say how long Lord Cazaril may yet live.” His glance aside caught Cazaril’s hard, pleading stare, and he added faithfully, “There is no reason he may not continue in his secretarial duties as long as he feels well enough. You should not permit him to overtax himself, however. By your leave, I should like to return each week to reexamine him.”

“Of course,” said Iselle faintly.