“Yes, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fox cleared his throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cazaril merely smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Fox brightened. Even his secretary smiled.

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

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

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

“I want time.”

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

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

Even the Fox was forced to nod judiciously at this.

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

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

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

How long have I been walking down this road?

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

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

Oh.

Then.

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

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

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

Nothing, of course, happened.

Well, eventually it started to rain.

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

And his men were marched to safety.

And his feet alone went down another road . . .

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

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

But not, alas, Dondo.

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

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

Bah.

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

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

At the last moment, with principles agreed upon, treaties written out in multiple copies in a fair court hand, signed by all parties and their witnesses, and sealed, practicalities nearly brought all to a halt. The Fox, not without reason in Cazaril’s view, balked at sending his son into Chalion with so little guarantee of his personal safety. But the roya had neither the men nor the money in his war-weary royacy to raise a large force to guard Bergon, and Cazaril was fearful of the effect upon Chalion of taking arms across the border, even in so fair a cause. Their debate grew heated; the Fox, shamed by the reminder that he owed Bergon’s very life to Cazaril, took to avoiding Cazaril’s petitions in a way that reminded Cazaril forcibly of Orico.

Cazaril received Iselle’s first ciphered letter, via the relay of couriers from the Daughter’s Order that he had set up on their outbound route. It had been penned just four days after he had left Cardegoss, and was brief, simply confirming that Teidez’s funeral rites had taken place without incident, and that Iselle would leave the capital that afternoon with his cortege for Valenda and the interment. She noted, with obvious relief, Our prayers were answered—the sacred animals showed the Son of Autumn has taken him up after all. I pray he will find ease in the god’s good company. She added, My eldest brother lives, and has back sight in one eye. But he remains very swollen. He stays at home, abed. More chillingly, she reported: Our enemy has set two of his nieces as ladies-in-waiting in my household. I will not be able to write often. The Lady speed your embassy.

He looked in vain for a postscript from Betriz, nearly missing it till he turned the paper over. Minute numbers in her distinctive hand lay half-hidden beneath the cracked wax of the seal itself. He scraped at the residue with his thumbnail. The brief notation thus revealed led him to a page toward the back of the book, one of Ordol’s most lyrical prayers: a passionate plea for the safety of a beloved one who traveled far from home. How many years—decades—had it been since someone far away had prayed just for him? Cazaril wasn’t even sure if this had been meant for his eyes, or only for those of the gods, but he touched the tiny cipher secretly to the five sacred points, lingering a little on his lips, before leaving his chamber to seek Bergon.

He shared the other side of the letter with the royse, who studied it, and the code system, with fascination. Cazaril composed a brief note telling of the success of his mission, and Bergon, his tongue clamped between his teeth, laboriously ciphered out a letter in his own hand to go to his new betrothed along with it.

Cazaril counted days in his head. It was impossible that dy Jironal not have spies in the court of Ibra. Sooner or later, Cazaril’s appearance there must be reported back to Cardegoss. How soon? Would dy Jironal guess that Cazaril’s negotiations on Iselle’s behalf had prospered so stunningly? Would he seize the royesse’s person, would he calculate Cazaril’s next move, would he try to intercept Bergon in Chalion?

After several days of the deadlock over the royse’s safety, Cazaril, in a burst of genius, sent Bergon in to argue his own case. This was an envoy the Fox could not evade, not even in his private chambers. Bergon was young and energetic, his imagination passionately engaged, and the Fox was old and tired. Worse, or perhaps, from Cazaril’s point of view, better, a town in South Ibra of the late Heir’s party rose in arms about some failure of treaty, and the Fox was forced to muster men to ride out to pacify it again. Frenzied with the dilemma, torn between his great hopes and his icy fears for his sole surviving son, the Fox threw the resolution back upon Bergon and his coterie.

Resolution, Cazaril was discovering, was one thing Bergon did not lack. The royse quickly endorsed Cazaril’s scheme to travel lightly and in disguise across the hostile country between the Ibran border and Valenda. For escort Bergon chose, besides Cazaril and the dy Guras, only three close companions: two young Ibran lords, dy Tagille and dy Cembuer, and the only slightly older March dy Sould.

The enthusiastic dy Tagille proposed that they travel as a party of Ibran merchants bound for Cardegoss. Cazaril did insist that all the men, noble or humble, who rode with the royse be experienced in arms. The group assembled within a day of Bergon’s decision, in what Cazaril prayed was secrecy, at one of dy Tagille’s manors outside Zagosur. It was not, Cazaril discovered, so small a company as all that; with servants, it came to over a dozen mounted men and a baggage train of half a dozen mules. In addition the servants led four fine matched white Ibran mountain ponies meant as a gift for Bergon’s betrothed, in the meantime doubling as spare mounts.

They started off in high spirits; the companions obviously thought it a high and noble adventure. Bergon was more sober and thoughtful, which pleased Cazaril, who felt as though he were leading a party of children into caverns of madness. But at least in Bergon’s case, not blindly. Which was better than the gods had done for him, Cazaril reflected darkly. He wondered if the curse could be tricking him, leading them all into war and not out of it. Dy Jironal hadn’t started out so corrupt, either.

Being limited to the speed of the slowest pack mule, the pace was not so painful as the race to Zagosur had been. The climb up from the coast to the base of the Bastard’s Teeth took four full days. Another letter from Iselle caught up with Cazaril there, this one written some fourteen days after he’d departed Cardegoss. She reported Teidez buried with due ceremony in Valenda, and her success in her ploy of remaining there, extending her visit to her bereaved mother and grandmother. Dy Jironal had been forced to return to Cardegoss by reports of Orico’s worsening ill health. Unfortunately, he had left behind not only his female spies, but also several companies of soldiers to guard Chalion’s new Heiress. I’m taking thought what to do about them, Iselle reported, a turn of phrase that brought up the hairs on the back of Cazaril’s neck. She also included a private letter to Bergon, which Cazaril passed along unopened. Bergon didn’t share its contents, but he smiled frequently over Ordol’s pages as he deciphered it, head bent close to the candles in their stuffy inn chamber.

More encouragingly, the Provincara had included a letter of her own, declaring that Iselle had received private promises of support for the Ibran marriage not only from her uncle the provincar of Baocia, but three other provincars as well. Bergon would have defenders, when he arrived.

When Cazaril showed this note to Bergon, the royse nodded decisively. “Good. We go on.”

They suffered a check nonetheless here, when discouraged travelers coming back down the road to their inn that night reported the pass blocked with new snow. Consulting the map and his memory, Cazaril led the company instead a day’s ride to the north, to a higher and less frequented pass still reported clear. The reports proved correct, but two horses strained their hocks on the climb. As they neared the divide, the March dy Sould, who claimed himself more comfortable on the deck of a ship than the back of a horse, and who had been growing quieter and quieter all morning, suddenly leaned over the side of his saddle and vomited.

The company bunched to a wheezing halt on the trail, while Cazaril, Bergon, and Ferda consulted, and the usually witty dy Sould mumbled embarrassed and disturbingly muddled apologies and protests.

“Should we stop and build a fire, and try to warm him?” the royse asked in worry, staring around the desolate slopes.

Cazaril, himself standing half-bent-over, replied, “He’s dazed as a man in a high fever, but he’s not hot. He’s seacoast-bred. I think this is not an infection, but rather a sickness that sometimes overcomes lowlanders in the heights. In either case, it will be better to care for him down out of this miserable rocky wilderness.”

Ferda, eyeing him sideways, asked, “How are you doing, my lord?”

Bergon, too, frowned at him in concern.

“Nothing that stopping and sitting down here will improve. Let’s push on.”

They mounted again, Bergon riding near to dy Sould when the trail permitted. The sick man clung to his saddle with grim determination. Within half an hour, Foix gave a thin and breathless whoop, and pointed to the cairn of rocks that marked the Ibra-Chalion border. The company cheered, and paused briefly to add their stones. They began the descent, steeper even than the climb. Dy Sould grew no worse, reassuring Cazaril of his diagnosis. Cazaril grew no better, but then, he didn’t expect to.

In the afternoon, they came over the lower lip of a barren vale and dropped into a thick pine wood. The air seemed richer here, even if only with the sharp delicious scent of the pines, and the bed of needles underfoot cushioned the horses’ sore feet. The sighing trees sheltered them all from the wind’s prying fingers. As they rounded a curve, Cazaril’s ears picked up the muffled thump of trotting hooves from the path ahead, the first fellow traveler they had encountered all day; just one rider, though, so no danger to their number.

The rider was a grizzled man with fierce bushy eyebrows and beard, dressed in stained leathers. He hailed them and, a little to Cazaril’s surprise, pulled up his shaggy horse across their path.

“I am castle warder to the Castillar dy Zavar. We saw your company coming down the vale, when the clouds broke. My lord sends me to warn you, there is a storm blowing up the valley. He invites you to shelter with him till the worst is past.”

Dy Tagille greeted this offer of hospitality with delight. Bergon dropped back and lowered his voice to Cazaril. “Do you think we ought, Caz?”

“I’m not sure . . .” He tried to think if he’d ever heard of a Castillar dy Zavar.

Bergon glanced at his friend dy Sould, drooping over his pommel. “I’d give much to get him indoors. We are many, and armed.”

Cazaril allowed, “We’d not make good speed in a blizzard, besides the risk of losing the trail.”

The grizzled castle warder called out, “Suit yourselves, gentlemen, but since it’s my job to collect the bodies from the ditches in this district come spring, I’d take it as a personal favor if you’d accept. The storm will blow through before morning, I’d guess.”

“Well, I’m glad we at least got over the pass before this broke. Yes,” decided Bergon. He raised his voice. “We thank you, sir, and do accept your lord’s kind offer!”

The grizzled man saluted, and nudged his horse back down the road. A mile farther on, he wheeled to the left and led them up a fainter trail through the tall, dark pines. The path dropped, then rose steeply for a time, zigzagging. The horses’ haunches bunched and surged, pushing them uphill. Away through the trees, Cazaril could hear the distant squabbling and cawing of a flock of crows, and was comforted in memory.

They broke out into the gray light upon a rocky spur. Perched on the outcrop rose a small and rather dilapidated fortress built of undressed native stone. An encouraging curl of smoke rose from its chimney.

They passed under a fieldstone arch into a courtyard paved with slates; a stable opened directly onto it, as well as a broad wooden portico over the doors leading into the main hall. Its margins were cluttered with tools, barrels, and odd trash. Curing deer hides were nailed up to the stable wall. Some tough-looking men, servants or grooms or guards or all three in this rough rural household, moved from the portico to help with the party’s horses and mules. But it was the nearly half dozen new ghosts, whirling frantically about the courtyard, that opened Cazaril’s eyes wide and stopped the breath in his throat.

That they were fresh, he could tell by their crisp gray outlines, still holding the forms they’d had in life: three men, a woman, and a weeping boy. The woman-shape pointed to the grizzled man. White fire streamed from her mouth, silent screams.

Cazaril jerked his horse back beside Bergon’s, leaned over, and muttered, “This is a trap. Look to your weapons. Pass the word.” Bergon fell back beside dy Tagille, who in turn bent to speak quietly to a pair of the party’s grooms. Cazaril smiled in dissimulation, and sidled his horse over to Foix’s, where he held up his hand before his mouth as if sharing a jest, and repeated the warning. Foix smiled blandly and nodded. His eyes darted around the courtyard, counting up the odds, as he leaned toward his brother.

The odds did not seem ill, but for that rangy lout up on the wooden perch beside the gate, leaning against the inner wall, a crossbow dangling, as if casually, from his hand. Except that it was cocked. Cazaril maneuvered back by Bergon, putting himself and his horse between the royse and the gate. “ ‘Ware bowman,” he breathed. “Duck under a mule.”

The ghosts were darting from place to place about the yard, pointing out concealed men behind the barrels and tools, shadowed in the stalls, and, apparently, waiting just inside the main door. Cazaril revised his opinion of the odds. The grizzled man motioned to one of his men, and the gate swung shut behind the party. Cazaril twisted in his saddle and dug his hand into his saddlebag. His fingers touched silk, then the smooth coolness of round beads; he had not pawned Dondo’s pearls in Zagosur because the price was disadvantageous there, so close to the source. He swept his hand up, drawing out the glistening rope of them in a grand gesture. As he swung the string around his head, he popped the cord with his thumb. Pearls spewed off the end of the line and bounced about the slate-paved court. The startled toughs laughed, and began to dive for them.

Cazaril dropped his arm, and shouted, “Now!”

The grizzled commander, who had apparently been just about to shout a similar order, was taken aback. Cazaril’s men drew steel first, falling upon the distracted enemy. Cazaril half fell out of his saddle just before a crossbow bolt thunked into it. His horse reared and bolted, and he scrambled to pull his own sword out of its scabbard.

Foix, bless the boy, had managed to get his own crossbow quietly unshipped before the chaos of shouting men and plunging horses struck. One of the male ghosts streaked past Cazaril’s inner eye, and pointed at an obscured shape dodging along the top of the portico. Cazaril tapped Foix’s arm, and shouted, “Up there!” Foix cocked and whirled just as a second bowman popped up; Cazaril could swear the frantic ghost tried to guide the quarrel. It entered the bowman’s right eye and dropped him instantly. Foix ducked and began recocking; the ratcheting mechanism whirred.

Cazaril, turning to seek an enemy, found one seeking him. From the main door, steel drawn, barged a startlingly familiar form: Ser dy Joal, dy Jironal’s stirrup-man, whom Cazaril had last seen in Cardegoss. Cazaril raised his sword just in time to deflect dy Joal’s first furious blow. His belly twinged, cramped, then knotted agonizingly as they circled briefly for advantage, and then dy Joal bore in.

The excruciating belly pain drained the strength from Cazaril’s arm, almost doubling him over; he barely beat off the next attack, and counterattack was suddenly out of the question. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the female ghost curl tightly in upon herself. She—or was that a pearl?—or both united, somehow slid under dy Joal’s boot. Dy Joal skidded violently and unexpectedly forward, flailing for balance. Cazaril’s point rammed through his throat and lodged briefly in the bones of his neck.

A hideous shock ran up Cazaril’s arm. Not just his belly but his whole body seemed to cramp, and his vision blurred and darkened. Within him, Dondo screamed in triumph. The death demon surged up like a whirling fire behind his eyes, eager and implacable. Cazaril convulsed, vomiting. In Cazaril’s uncontrolled recoil, his sword ripped out sideways; vessels spurted, and dy Joal collapsed at his feet in a welter of blood.

Cazaril found himself on his hands and knees on the icy slates, his sword, dropped from his nerveless hand, still ringing faintly. He was trembling all over so badly he could not stand up again. He spat bile from his watering mouth. On his sword’s point, as it lay on the stone, dy Joal’s wet blood steamed and smoked, blackening. Surges of nausea swept through his swollen and pulsing abdomen.

Inside him, Dondo wailed and howled in frustrated rage, slowly smothered again to silence. The demon settled back like a stalking cat on its belly, watchful and tense. Cazaril clenched and unclenched his hand, just to be sure he was still in possession of his own body.

So. The death demon wasn’t fussy whose souls filled its buckets, so long as there were two of them. Cazaril’s and Dondo’s, Cazaril’s and some other killer’s—or victim’s—he wasn’t just sure which, or if it even mattered, under the circumstances. Dondo clearly had hoped to cling to his body, and let Cazaril’s soul be ripped away. Leaving Dondo in, so to speak, possession. Dondo’s goals and those of the demon were, it seemed, slightly divergent. The demon would be happy if Cazaril died in any way at all. Dondo wanted a murder, or a murdering.

Sunk strengthless to the stones, tears leaking between his eyelids, Cazaril became aware that the noise had died down. A hand touched his elbow, and he flinched. Foix’s distressed voice came to his ear, “My lord? My lord, are you wounded?”

“Not . . . not stabbed,” Cazaril got out. He blinked, wheezing. He reached out for his blade, then jerked his hand back, fingertips stinging. The steel was hot to the touch. Ferda appeared on his other side, and the two brothers drew him to his feet. He stood shivering with reaction.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” said Ferda. “That dark-haired lady in Cardegoss promised us the royesse would have our ears if we did not bring you back to her alive.”

“Yes,” put in Foix, “and that she would have the rest of our skins for a drum head, thereafter.”

“Your skins are safe, for now.” Cazaril rubbed his watering eyes and straightened a little, staring around. A sergeantly-looking groom, sword out, had half a dozen of the toughs lying facedown on the slates in surrender. Three more bandits sat leaning against the stable wall, moaning and bleeding. Another servant was dragging up the body of the dead crossbowman.

Cazaril scowled down at dy Joal, lying sprawled before him. They hadn’t exchanged a single word in their brief encounter. He was deeply sorry he’d torn out the bravo’s lying throat. His presence here implied much, but confirmed nothing. Was he dy Jironal’s agent or acting on his own?

“The leader—where is he? I want to put him to the question.”

“Over there, my lord”—Foix pointed—“but I’m afraid he won’t be answering.”

Bergon was just rising from the examination of an unmoving body; the grizzled man, alas.

Ferda said uneasily, in a tone of apology, “He fought fiercely and wouldn’t surrender. He had wounded two of our grooms, so Foix finally downed him with a crossbow bolt.”

“Do you think he really was the castle warder here, my lord?” Foix added.

“No.”

Bergon picked his way over to him, sword in hand, and looked him up and down in worry. “What do we do now, Caz?”

The female ghost, grown somewhat less agitated, was beckoning him toward the gate. One of the male ghosts, equally urgent, was beckoning him toward the main door. “I . . . I follow, momentarily.”

“What?” said Bergon.

Cazaril tore his gaze away from what only his inner eye saw. “Lock them”—he nodded toward their surrendered foes—“up in a stall, and set a guard. Whole and wounded together for now. We’ll tend to them after our own. Then send a body of able men to search the premises, see if there are any more hiding. Or . . . or anybody else. Hiding. Or . . . whatever.” His eye returned to the gate, where the streaming woman beckoned again. “Foix, bring your bow and sword and come with me.”

“Should we not take more men, lord?”

“No, I don’t think so . . .”

Leaving Bergon and Ferda to direct the mopping-up, Cazaril at last headed for the gate. Foix followed, staring as Cazaril turned without hesitation down a path into the pines. As they walked along it, the cries of the crows grew louder. Cazaril braced himself. The path opened out onto the edge of a steep ravine.

“Bastard’s hell,” whispered Foix. He lowered his bow and touched the five theological points, forehead-lip-navel-groin-heart, in a warding gesture.

They’d found the bodies.

They were thrown upon the midden, tumbled down the edge of the crevasse atop years of kitchen and stable yard waste. One younger man, two older; in this rural place it was not possible to distinguish certainly master from man by dress, as all wore practical working leathers and woolens. The woman, plump and homely and middle-aged, was stripped naked, as was the boy, who appeared to have been about five. Both mutilated according to a cruel humor. Violated, too, probably. Dead about a day, Cazaril judged by the progress the crows had made. The woman-ghost was weeping silently, and the child-ghost clung to her and wailed. They were not god-rejected souls, then, just sundered, still dizzied from their deaths and unable to find their way without proper ceremonies.

Cazaril fell to his knees, and whispered, “Lady. If I am alive in this place, you must be, too. If it please you, give these poor spirits ease.”

The ghostly faces changed, rippling from woe to wonder; the insubstantial bodies blurred like sun diffractions in a high, feathered cloud, then vanished.

After about a minute Cazaril said muzzily, “Help me up, please.”

The bewildered Foix levered him up with a hand under his elbow. Cazaril staggered around and started back up the path.

“My lord, should we not look around for others?”

“No, that’s all.”

Foix followed him without another word.

In the slate-paved courtyard, they found Ferda and an armed groom just emerging again from the main doorway.

“Did you find anyone else?” Cazaril asked him.

“No, my lord.”

Beside the door, only the young male ghost still lingered, although its luminescent body seemed to be ribboning away like smoke in a wind. It writhed in a kind of agony, gesturing Cazaril on. What dire urgency was it that turned it from the open arms of the goddess to cling to this wounded world? “Yes, yes, I’m coming,” Cazaril told it.

It slipped inside; Cazaril motioned Foix and Ferda, looking uneasily at him, to follow on. They passed through the main hall and under a gallery, back through the kitchens, and down some wooden stairs to a dark, stone-walled storeroom.

“Did you search in here?” Cazaril called over his shoulder.

“Yes, my lord,” said Ferda.

“Get more light.” He stared intently at the ghost, which was now circling the room in agitation, whirling in a tightening spiral. Cazaril pointed. “Move those barrels.”

Foix rolled them aside. Ferda clattered back down from the kitchen with a brace of tallow candles, their flames yellow and smoky but bright in the gloom. Concealed beneath the barrels they found a stone slab in the floor with an iron ring set in it. Cazaril motioned to Foix again; the boy grabbed the ring and strained, and shifted the slab up and aside, revealing narrow steps descending into utter blackness.

From below, a faint voice cried out.

The ghost bent to Cazaril, seeming to kiss his forehead, hands, and feet, and then streamed away into eternity. A faint blue sparkle, like a chord of music made visible, glittered for a moment in Cazaril’s second sight, and was gone. Ferda, the candles in one hand and his drawn sword in the other, cautiously descended the stone steps.

Clamor and babble wafted back up through the dank slot. In a few moments, Ferda appeared again, supporting up the stairs a disheveled stout old man, his face bruised and battered, his legs shaking. Following in his wake, weeping for gladness, a dozen other equally shattered people climbed one by one.

The freed prisoners all fell upon Ferda and Foix with questions and tales at once, inundating them; Cazaril leaned unobtrusively upon a barrel and pieced together the picture. The stout man proved the real Castillar dy Zavar, a distraught middle-aged woman his castillara, and two young people a son and a—in Cazaril’s view, miraculously spared—daughter. The rest were servants and dependents of this rural household.

Dy Joal and his troop had descended upon them yesterday, at first seeming merely rough travelers. Only when a couple of the bravos had made to molest the castillar’s cook, and her husband and the real castle warder had gone to her defense and attempted to eject the unwelcome visitors, had steel been drawn. It truly was the house’s custom to take in benighted or storm-threatened wayfarers from the road over the pass. No one here had known or recognized dy Joal or any of his men.

The old castillar gripped Ferda’s cloak anxiously. “My elder son, does he live? Have you seen him? He went to my castle warder’s aid . . .”

“Was he a young man of about these men’s age”—Cazaril nodded to the dy Gura brothers—“dressed in wool and leathers like your own?”

“Aye . . .” The old man’s face drained in anticipation.

“He is in the care of the gods, and much comforted there,” Cazaril reported factually.

Cries of grief greeted this news; wearily, Cazaril mounted the stairs to the kitchen in the mob’s wake, as they spread out to regain their house, recover their dead, and care for the wounded.

“My lord,” Ferda murmured to him, as Cazaril paused briefly to warm himself by the kitchen fire, “had you ever been to this house before?”

“No.”

“Then how did you—I heard nothing, when I looked in that cellar. I would have left those poor people to die of thirst and hunger and madness in the dark.”

“I think dy Joal’s men would have confessed to them, before the night was done.” Cazaril frowned grimly. “Among the many other things I intend to learn from them.”

The captured bravos, under a duress Cazaril was happy to allow and the freed housemen eager to supply, told their half of the tale soon enough. They were a mixed lot, including some lawless and impoverished discharged soldiers who had followed the grizzled man, and a few local hirelings, one of whom had led them to dy Zavar’s holding for sake of its amazing vantage of the road from its highest tower. Dy Joal, riding to the Ibran border alone and in a hurry, had picked them all up from a town at the foot of these mountains, where they had formerly eked out a living alternating between guarding travelers and robbing them.

The bravos knew only that dy Joal had come there looking to waylay a man expected to be riding over the passes from Ibra. They did not know who their new employer really was, although they’d despised his courtier’s clothes and mannerisms. It was abundantly clear to Cazaril that dy Joal had not been in control of the men he’d hastily hired. When the altercation about the cook had tipped over into violence, he’d not had either the nerve or the muscle to stop it, administer discipline, or restore order before events had run their ugly course.

Bergon, disturbed, drew Cazaril aside in the flickering torchlight of the courtyard where this rough-and-ready interrogation was taking place. “Caz, did I bring this wretched chance down upon poor dy Zavar’s good people?”

“No, Royse. It’s clear dy Joal was expecting only me, riding back as Iselle’s courier. Chancellor dy Jironal has sought to tear me from her service for some time—secretly assassinate me, if there proved no other way. How I wish I hadn’t killed that fool! I’d give my teeth to know how much dy Jironal knows by now.”

“Are you sure the chancellor set this trap?”

Cazaril hesitated. “Dy Joal had a personal grudge against me, but . . . the world knew merely that I’d ridden to Valenda. Dy Joal could only have had surmise of my true route from dy Jironal. Therefore, we may be certain dy Jironal had some report of me from his spies in Ibra. His knowledge of our real aim lags—but not, I think, by much. Dy Joal was a stopgap, hurriedly dispatched. And certainly not the only such agent. Something else must follow.”

“How soon?”

“I don’t know. Dy Jironal commands the Order of the Son; he can draw on its men as soon as he can evolve a plausible enough lie by which to move them.”

Bergon tapped his sheathed sword against his leather-clad thigh, and frowned up at the sky, which was clearing as evening fell. The mountain spines to the west were black silhouettes against a lingering green glow, and the first stars shone overhead. The grizzled man’s tale of an approaching blizzard had proved a mere decoy, although a light snow squall that had blown through earlier might have been the seed of the idea. “The moon is nearly full, and will be well up by midnight. If we ride both night and day, perchance we can push across this disturbed country before dy Jironal can bring up any more reinforcements.”

Cazaril nodded. “Let him rush his men to patrol a border that we’re already across? Good. I like it.”

Bergon studied him in doubt. “But . . . will you be able to ride, Caz?”

“I’d rather ride than fight.”

Bergon sighed agreement. “Yes.”

THE GRATEFUL, GRIEVING CASTILLAR DY ZAVAR pressed all the refreshment his disrupted household could spare upon them. Bergon decided to leave the mules, injured grooms, and lamed horses in his care, to follow on when they could, and lighten his own party thereby. Ferda selected the fastest, soundest horses, and made sure they were rubbed down well and fed and rested until time to start. March dy Sould had recovered after a few hours of rest in this more nourishing air, and insisted on accompanying the royse. Dy Cembuer, who had suffered a broken arm and some freely bleeding cuts in the courtyard fight, undertook to stay with the grooms and baggage and assist dy Zavar until all were ready to travel.

The problem of justice upon the brigands, Cazaril was relieved to leave to their victims. Bergon’s midnight departure would spare them having to witness the hangings at dawn. He left the scattered portion of Dondo’s pearls for the stricken household to collect, and tucked the remains of the rope back in his saddlebag.

The royse’s cavalcade took to the road again when the moon rose over the hills before them, filling the snowy vales with liquid light. There would be no turning aside now before Valenda.

They retraced Cazaril’s outbound route across western Chalion, changing horses at obscure rural posts of the Daughter’s Order. At every stop he inquired anxiously for any further ciphered messages from Iselle or news from Valenda that might reveal the tactical situation into which they rushed. He grew increasingly uneasy at the absence of letters. In the original plan, they had envisioned Iselle waiting with her grandmother and mother, guarded by her uncle dy Baocia’s troops. Cazaril feared this ideal condition no longer held.

They checked at midevening twenty-five miles short of Valenda at the village of Palma. The region around Palma was noted for its fine pasturage; a post of the Daughter’s Order there devoted itself to raising and training remounts for the Temple. Cazaril was certain of obtaining fresh horses in Palma. He prayed for fresh intelligence as well.

Cazaril did not so much dismount from his blown horse as fall slowly, all in a piece, as if his body were carved from a single block of wood. Both Ferda and Foix had to support him through the order’s sprawling compound. They brought him into a shabbily comfortable chamber, where a bright fire burned in a fieldstone fireplace. A plain pine table had been hastily cleared of someone’s card game. The dedicat-commander of the post hurried in to wait upon them. The man glanced uncertainly from dy Tagille to dy Sould; his gaze passed over Bergon, who’d dressed as a groom since the border for caution’s sake. The commander fell into apologetic confusion when the royse was introduced, and sent his lieutenant scurrying for food and drink to offer his distinguished company.

Cazaril sat by the table in a cushioned chair, wonderfully unlike a saddle even if the room did still seem to be rocking around him. He was beginning to dislike horses almost as much as he disliked boats. His head felt stuffed with wool, and his body didn’t bear thinking about. He broke into the exchange of courtly amenities to croak, “What word have you from Valenda? Do you hold any new messages from the Royesse Iselle?” Ferda pressed a glass of watered wine into his hand, and he gulped half of it at once.

The dedicat-commander gave him a little understanding headshake, his lips tightening. “Chancellor dy Jironal marched a thousand more of his men into the town last week. He has another thousand bivouacked along the river. They patrol the countryside, looking for you. Searchers have stopped here twice. He holds Valenda tight in his grip.”

“Didn’t Provincar dy Baocia have any men there?”

“Yes, two companies, but they were badly outnumbered. No one would start the fight at Royse Teidez’s interment, and after that they dared not.”

“Have you heard from March dy Palliar?”

“He used to bring the letters. We’ve had no direct word from the royesse for five days. It’s rumored that she is very ill and sees no one.”

Bergon’s eyes widened in alarm. Cazaril squinted and rubbed his aching head. “Ill? Iselle? Well . . . maybe. Or else held close-confined by dy Jironal, and the illness a tale put about.” Had one of Cazaril’s letters fallen into the wrong hands? He had feared they might have to either spirit the royesse out of Valenda, or break her free by force of arms, preferably the former. He hadn’t planned what to do if she had fallen, perhaps, too sick to ride at this critical moment.

His muzzy brain evolved a mad vision of somehow sneaking Bergon in to her, over the rooftops and balconies like a lover in a poem. No. A night of secret love between them might break the curse, channel it back somehow to the gods who had spilled it, but he couldn’t see how it would miraculously make away with two thousand or so very fleshly soldiers.

“Does Orico still live?” he asked at last.

“As far as we’ve heard.”

“We can do nothing more tonight.” He wouldn’t trust any plan that came out of his tired brain tonight. “Tomorrow, Foix and Ferda and I will go into Valenda on foot, in disguise, and reconnoiter. I promise you I can pass for a road vagabond. If we can’t see our way clear, then fall back to Provincar dy Baocia’s people in Taryoon, and plan again.”

“Can you walk, my lord?” asked Foix in a dubious voice.

Right now, he wasn’t sure if he could stand up. He glowered helplessly at Foix, who was tired but resilient, pink rather than gray after days in the saddle. Youth. Eh. “By tomorrow, I will.” He rubbed his face. “Do dy Jironal’s men realize they are not guardians but prison-keepers? That they are being led into possible treason against the rightful Heiress?”

The dedicat-commander sat back, and opened his hands. “Such charges are being flung about like snowballs from both parties right now. Rumors that the royesse has sent agents into Ibra to contract a marriage with the new Heir are flying everywhere.” He gave Royse Bergon an apologetic nod.

So much for the secrecy of his mission. He considered the pitfalls of potential party lines in Chalion. Iselle and Orico versus dy Jironal, all right. Iselle versus Orico and Dy Jironal . . . hideously dangerous.

“The news has had a mixed reception,” the commander continued. “The ladies look on Bergon with approval and want to make a romance of it all, because it’s said that he is brave and well-favored. Soberer heads worry that Iselle may sell Chalion to the Fox, because she is, ah, young and inexperienced.”

In other words, foolish and flighty. Sober heads had much to learn. Cazaril’s lips drew back on a dry grin. “No,” he mumbled. “We have not done that.” He realized that he was speaking to his knees, his forehead having unaccountably sunk to the table and anchored there.

After about a minute Bergon’s voice murmured gently in his ear, “Caz? Are you awake?”

“Mm.”

“Would you like to go to bed, my lord?” the dedicat-commander inquired after another pause.

“Mm.”

He whimpered a little as strong hands under each arm forced him to his feet. Ferda and Foix, leading him off somewhere, cruelly. The table had been soft enough . . . He didn’t even remember falling into the bed.

SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HIS SHOULDER.

A hideously cheerful voice bellowed in his ear, “Rise and ride, Captain Sunshine!”

He spasmed and clawed at his covers, tried to sit up, and thought better of the effort. He pulled open his glued-shut eyelids, blinking in the candlelight. The identity of the voice finally penetrated. “Palli! You’re alive!” He meant to shout joyfully. At least it came out audibly. “What time is it?” He struggled again to sit up, making it onto one elbow. He seemed to be in some evicted officer-dedicat’s plainly furnished bedchamber.

“About an hour before dawn. We’ve been riding all night. Iselle sent me to find you.” He raised his brace of candles higher. Bergon was standing anxiously at his shoulder, and Foix too. “Bastard’s demons, Caz, you look like death on a trencher.”

“That . . . has been observed.” He lay back down. Palli was here. Palli was here, and all was well. He could shove Bergon and all his burdens off onto him, lie here, and not get up. Die alone and in peace, taking Dondo out of the world with him. “Take Royse Bergon and his company to Iselle. Leave me—”

“What, for dy Jironal’s patrols to find? Not if I value my future fortune as a courtier! Iselle wants you safe with her in Taryoon.”

“Taryoon? Not Valenda?” He blinked. “Safe?” This time he did struggle up, and all the way to his feet, where he passed out.

The black fog lifted, and he found Bergon, round-eyed, holding him slumped on the edge of the bed.

“Sit a minute with your head down,” Palli advised.

Cazaril obediently bent over his aching belly. If Dondo had visited him last night, he’d not been home. The ghost had kicked him a few times in his sleep, though, it felt like. From the inside out.

Bergon said softly, “He ate nothing when we came in last night. He collapsed straightaway, and we put him to bed.”

“Right,” said Palli, and jerked his thumb at the hovering Foix, who nodded and slipped out of the room.

“Taryoon?” Cazaril mumbled from the vicinity of his knees.

“Aye. She gave all two thousand of dy Jironal’s men the slip, she did. Well, first of all, before that, her uncle dy Baocia pulled his men out and went home. The fools let him go; thought it was a danger removed from their midst. Yes, and made free to move at will! Then Iselle rode out five days running, always with a troop of dy Jironal’s cavalry for escort, and gave them more exercise than they cared for. Had ’em absolutely convinced she meant to escape while riding. So when she and Lady Betriz went walking out one day with old Lady dy Hueltar, they let her go by. I was waiting with two saddled horses, and two women to change cloaks with ’em and go back with the old lady. We were gone down that ravine so fast . . . The old Provincara undertook to conceal she’d flown for as long as possible, pass it off that she was ill in her mother’s chambers. They’ve doubtless tumbled to it by now, but I’ll wager she was safe with her uncle in Taryoon before Valenda knew she was gone. Five gods, those girls can ride! Sixty miles cross-country between dusk and dawn under a full moon, and only one change of horses.”

“Girls?” said Cazaril. “Is Lady Betriz safe, too?”

“Oh, aye. Both of ’em chipper as songbirds, when I left ’em. Made me feel old.”

Cazaril squinted up at Palli, five years his junior, but let this pass. “Ser dy Ferrej . . . the Provincara, Lady Ista?”

Palli’s face sobered. “Still hostages in Valenda. They all told the girls to go on, you know.”

“Ah.”

Foix brought him a bowl of bean porridge, hot and aromatic, on a tray, and Bergon himself arranged his pillows and helped him sit up to eat it. Cazaril had thought he was ravenous, yet found himself unable to force down more than a few bites. Palli was keen to get away while the darkness still cloaked their numbers. Cazaril struggled to oblige, letting Foix help him back into his clothes. He dreaded the attempt to ride again.

In the post’s stable yard, he found that their escort, a dozen men of the Daughter’s Order who’d followed Palli from Taryoon, waited with a horse litter slung between two mounts. Indignant at first, he let Bergon persuade him into it, and the cavalcade swung away into the graying dark. The rough back roads and trails they took made the litter jounce and sway nauseatingly. After half an hour of this, he cried for mercy, and undertook to climb on a horse. Someone had thought to bring along a smooth-paced ambler for this very purpose, and he clung to the saddle and endured its rippling gait while they swung wide around Valenda and its occupiers’ patrols.

In the afternoon, they dropped down from some wooded slopes onto a wider road, and Palli rode alongside him. Palli eyed him curiously, a little sideways.

“I hear you do miracles with mules.”

“Not me. The goddess.” Cazaril’s smile twisted. “She has a way with mules, it seems.”

“I’m also told you’re strangely hard on brigands.”

“We were a strong company, well armed. If the brigands hadn’t been set onto us by dy Joal, they would never have attempted us.”

“Dy Joal was one of dy Jironal’s best swords. Foix says you took him down in seconds.”

“That was a mistake. Besides, his foot slipped.”

Palli’s lips twitched. “You don’t have to go around telling people that, you know.” He stared ahead between his horse’s bobbing ears for a time. “So, the boy you defended on the Roknari galley was Bergon himself.”

“Yes. Kidnapped by his brother’s bravos, it turned out. Now I know why the Ibran fleet rowed so hard after us.”

“Did you never guess who he really was? Then or later?”

“No. He had . . . he had a deal more self-control than even I realized at the time. That one will make a roya worth following, when he comes into his own.”

Palli glanced ahead to where Bergon rode with dy Sould, and signed himself in wonder. “The gods are on our side, right enough. Can we fail?”

Cazaril snorted bitterly. “Yes.” He thought of Ista, Umegat, the tongueless groom. Of the deathly straits he was in. “And when we fail, the gods do, too.” He didn’t think he’d ever quite realized that before, not in those terms.

At least Iselle was safe for now behind the shield of her uncle; as Heiress, she would attract other ambitious men to her side. She would have many, not least Bergon himself, to protect her from her enemies, although advisors wise enough to also protect her from her friends might be harder for her to come by. . . . But what provision against the looming hazards could he effect for Betriz?

“Did you get the chance to know Lady Betriz better while you escorted the cortege to Valenda, and after?” he asked Palli.

“Oh, aye.”

“Beautiful girl, don’t you think? Did you get much conversation with her father, Ser dy Ferrej?”

“Yes. A most honorable man.”

“So I thought, too.”

“She’s very worried for him right now,” Palli added.

“I can imagine. And him for her, both now and later. If . . . if all goes well, she will be a favorite of the future royina. That kind of political influence could be worth far more to a shrewd man than a mere material dowry. If the man had the wit to see it.”

“No question of it.”

“She’s intelligent, energetic . . .”

“Rides well, too.” Palli’s tone was oddly dry.

Cazaril swallowed, and with an effort at a casual tone got out, “Couldn’t you just see her as the future Marchess dy Palliar?”

Palli’s mouth turned up on one side. “I fear my suit would be hopeless. I believe she has another man in her eye. Judging from all the questions she’s asked me about him, anyway.”

“Oh? Who?” He tried, briefly and without success, to convince himself Betriz dreamed of, say, dy Rinal, or one of the other courtiers of Cardegoss . . . eh. Lightweights, the lot of them. Few of the younger men had the wealth or influence, and none the wit, to make her a good match. In fact, now Cazaril came to consider the matter, none of them was good enough for her.

“It was in confidence. But I definitely think you should ask her all about it, when we get to Taryoon.” Palli smiled, and urged his horse forward.

Cazaril considered the implications of Palli’s smile, and of the white fur hat still tucked into his saddlebags. The woman you love, loves you? Had he any real doubt of it? There was, alas, more than enough impediment to twist this joyous suspicion into sorrow. Too late, too late, too late. For her fidelity he could return her only grief; his bier would be too hard and narrow to offer as a wedding bed.

It was a grace note in this lethal tangle nonetheless, like finding a survivor in a shipwreck or a flower blooming in a burned-over field. Well . . . well, she must simply get over her ill-fated attachment to him. And he must exert the utmost self-control not to encourage it in her. He wondered if he could promote Palli to her if he put it as the last request of a dying man.

Fifteen miles out from Taryoon, they were met by a large Baocian guard company. They had a hand litter, and relays of men to carry it aloft; too far gone by now to be anything but grateful, Cazaril let himself be loaded into it without protest. He even slept for a couple of hours, lumping along wrapped in a feather quilt, his aching head cushioned by pillows. He woke at length and watched the dreary darkening winter landscape wobble past him like a dream.

So, this was dying. It didn’t seem as bad, lying down. But please, just let me live to see this curse lifted from Iselle. It was a great work, one any man might look back on and say, That was my life; it was enough. He asked nothing more now but to be permitted to finish what he’d started. Iselle’s wedding, and Betriz made safe—if the gods would but give him those two gifts, he thought he could go in quiet content. I’m tired.

THEY ENTERED THE GATES OF THE BAOCIAN PROVINCIAL capital of Taryoon an hour after sunset. Curious citizens collected in the path of their little procession, or marched beside it with torches to light the way, or hurried out to watch from balconies as they passed. On three occasions, women tossed down flowers, which after their first uncertain flinch, Bergon’s Ibran companions caught; it helped that the ladies had good aim. The young lords sent hopeful and enthusiastic kisses through the air in return. They left interested murmurs in their wake, especially up on the balconies. Near the city center Bergon and his friends, escorted by Palli, were diverted to the town palace of the wealthy March dy Huesta, one of the provincar’s chief supporters and, not coincidentally, his brother-in-law. The Baocian guard carried Cazaril’s litter on at a smart pace to the provincar’s own new palace, down the street from the cramped and lowering old fortress.

Clutching his precious saddlebags containing the future of two countries, Cazaril was brought by dy Baocia’s castle warder to a fire-warmed bedchamber. Numerous wax lights revealed two waiting man-servants with a hip bath, extra hot water, soap, scissors, scents, and towels. A third man bore in a tray of mild white cheese, fruit cakes, and quantities of hot herb tea. Someone was taking no chances with Cazaril’s wardrobe, and had laid out a change of clothing on the bed, court mourning complete from fresh undergarments through brocades and velvets out to a silver and amethyst belt. The transformation from road wreckage to courtier took barely twenty minutes.

From his filthy saddlebags Cazaril drew his packet of documents, wrapped in oilcloth around silk, and checked them for dirt and bloodstains. Nothing untoward had leaked in. He discarded the grubby oilcloth and tucked the offerings under his arm. The castle warder guided Cazaril through a courtyard where workmen labored by torchlight to lay down the last paving stones, and into an adjoining building. They passed through a series of rooms to a spacious tiled chamber softened with rugs and wall hangings. Man-high iron candelabras holding five lights each, intricately wrought, shed a warming glow. Iselle sat in a large carved chair by the far wall, attended by Betriz and the provincar, also all in court mourning.

They looked up as he entered, the women eagerly, the middle-aged dy Baocia’s expression tempered with caution. Iselle’s uncle bore only a slight resemblance to his younger sister Ista, being solid rather than frail, though he was not overtall either, and he shared Ista’s dun hair color, gone grizzled. Dy Baocia was attended in turn by a stout man Cazaril took for his secretary, and an elderly fellow in the five-colored robes of the archdivine of Taryoon. Cazaril eyed him hopefully for any flicker of god light, but he was only a plain devout.

The dark cloud still hung thickly about Iselle in Cazaril’s second sight, though, roiling in a sluggish and sullen fashion. But not for much longer, by the Lady’s grace.

“Welcome home, Castillar,” said Iselle. The warmth of her voice was like a caress on his brow, her use of his title a covert warning.

Cazaril signed himself. “Five gods, Royesse, all is well.”

“You have the treaties?” dy Baocia asked, his gaze fixing on the packets under Cazaril’s arm. He held out an anxious hand. “There has been much concern over them in our councils.”

Cazaril smiled slightly and walked past him to kneel at Iselle’s feet, managing with careful effort not to grunt with pain, or pitch over in unseemly clumsiness. He brushed his lips across the backs of the hands she held out to him, and pressed the packet of documents in them, and them alone, as they turned palm up. “All is as you commanded.”

Her eyes were bright with appreciation. “I thank you, Cazaril.” She glanced up at her uncle’s secretary. “Fetch a chair for my ambassador, please. He has ridden long and hard, with little rest.” She began folding back the silk.

The secretary brought up a chair with a wool-stuffed cushion. Cazaril smiled rather fixedly in thanks and considered the problem of getting up again gracefully. Rather to his embarrassment, Betriz knelt to his side, and after a second more, the archdivine to his other, and both contrived to hoist him up. Betriz’s dark eyes searched him, lingering briefly and fearfully on his tumor-distended midsection, but she could do no more here than smile in encouragement.

Iselle was reading the marriage contract, though she spared a moment as Cazaril seated himself to cast a small smile in his direction. Cazaril watched and waited. As she finished each page she handed the rectangle of calligraphed and ink-stamped parchment up to her hovering uncle, who had them fairly snatched in turn by the archdivine. The secretary was last in line, but no less intent in his perusal. He collected the pages reverently back into order as they came to him.

Dy Baocia clutched his hands together and watched as the archdivine’s eyes sped down the last page. He held the parchment out silently to the stout secretary.

“Well?” said the provincar.

“She hasn’t sold Chalion.” The archdivine signed himself and opened both hands palm out in thanks to the gods. “She’s bought Ibra! My congratulations, Royesse, to your ambassador—and to you.”

“To us all,” said dy Baocia. All three men were looking vastly more cheerful.

Cazaril cleared his throat. “Indeed, but I trust you will not say as much to Royse Bergon. The treaties are potentially advantageous to both sides, after all.” He glanced at dy Baocia’s secretary. “Though perhaps it would allay people’s fears to have the articles copied out in a large fair hand and posted on the wall beside your palace doors, for everyone to read.”

Dy Baocia frowned uncertainly, but the archdivine nodded, and said, “A very wise suggestion, Castillar.”

“It would please me very much,” said Iselle in a soft voice. “I pray you, Uncle, have it seen to.”

A breathless page burst into the chamber, to skid to a stop before dy Baocia and blurt, “Your lady says Royse Bergon’s party ‘proaches at the gate, and you are to ‘tend on her at once to welcome him.”

“I’m on my way.” The provincar took a breath and smiled at his niece. “And so we bring your lover to you. Remember now, you must demand all the kisses of submission, brow, hands, and feet. Chalion must be seen to rule Ibra. Guard the pride and honor of your House. We must not let him put himself above you, or he will quickly become overweening. You must start as you mean to go on.”

Iselle’s eyes narrowed. Around her, the shadow darkened, seeming to tighten its grip.

Cazaril sat up, and shot her a look of alarm and a tiny headshake. “Royse Bergon has pride also, no less honorable than your own, Royesse. And he will stand before his own lords here, too.”

She hesitated; then her lips firmed. “I shall start as I mean to go on.” Her voice was suddenly not soft at all, but steel-edged. She gestured at the contract. “The substance of our equality is there, Uncle. My pride demands no greater show. We shall exchange the kisses of welcome, each to each, upon our hands alone.” The darkness uncurled a little; Cazaril felt an odd shiver, as though some predatory shadow had passed over his head and flown on, thwarted.

“An admirable discretion,” Cazaril endorsed this in relief.

The page, dancing from foot to foot, held open the door for the provincar, who swept out in haste.

“Lord Cazaril, how was your journey?” Betriz taxed him in this interlude. “You look so . . . tired.”

“A weary lot of riding, but it all went well enough.” He shifted in his seat and smiled up at her.

Her dark brows arched. “I think we must have Ferda and Foix in, to tell us more. Surely it was not so plain and dull as that.”

“Well, we had a little trouble with brigands in the mountains. Dy Jironal’s doing, I’m fairly sure. Bergon acquitted himself very well. The Fox . . . went easier than I expected, for a reason I didn’t.” He leaned forward, and lowered his voice to them both. “You remember my benchmate on the galleys I told of, Danni, the boy of good family?”

Betriz nodded, and Iselle said, “I am not likely to forget.”

“I didn’t guess how good a family. Danni was an alias Bergon gave, to keep himself secret from his captors. It seems his kidnapping was a ploy of Ibra’s late Heir. Bergon recognized me when I stood before the Ibran court—he had changed and grown almost out of reckoning.”

Iselle’s lips parted in astonishment. After a moment she breathed, “Surely the goddess gave you to me.”

“Yes,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’ve come to that conclusion myself.”

Her eyes turned toward the double doors on the opposite side of the chamber. Her hands twisted in her lap in a sudden flush of nerves. “How shall I recognize him? Is he—is he well-favored?”

“I don’t know how ladies judge such things—”

The doors swung wide. A great mob of persons surged through: pages, hangers-on, dy Baocia and his wife, Bergon and dy Sould and dy Tagille, and Palli bringing up the rear. The Ibrans had been treated to baths as well, and wore the best clothes they’d managed to pack in their meager bags, supplemented, Cazaril was fairly sure, with some judicious emergency borrowings. Bergon’s eyes flicked in a smiling panic from Betriz to Iselle, and settled on Iselle. Iselle gazed from face to face among the three strange Ibrans in a momentary terror.

Tall Palli, standing behind Bergon, pointed at the royse and mouthed, This one! Iselle’s gray eyes brightened, and her pale cheeks flooded with color.

Iselle held out her hands. “My lord Bergon dy Ibra,” she said in a voice that only quavered a little. “Welcome to Chalion.”

“My lady Iselle dy Chalion,” Bergon, striding up to her, returned breathlessly. “Dy Ibra thanks you.” He knelt to one knee, and kissed her hands. She bent her head, and kissed his.

Bergon rose again and introduced his companions, who bowed properly. With a slight scrape, the provincar and the archdivine, with their own hands, brought up a chair for Bergon and set it by Iselle’s on the other side from Cazaril. From a leather pouch dy Tagille held out, Bergon produced his royal greeting-gift, a necklace of fine emeralds—one of the last of his mother’s pieces not pawned by the Fox to buy arms. The white horses unfortunately were still back on the road somewhere. Bergon had been going to bring a rope of new Ibran pearls, but had made the substitution on Cazaril’s most earnest advice.

Dy Baocia made a little speech of welcome, which would have been rather longer if Iselle’s aunt, catching her niece’s eye, had not seized a pause in his periods to invite the assembled company into the next room to partake of refreshments. The young couple was left to have some private speech, and bent their heads together, largely inaudible to the eager eavesdroppers who lingered by the open doors and frequently peeked in to see how they were getting along.

Cazaril was not least forward among this number, craning his neck anxiously from his repositioned chair and alternating between nibbling on little cakes and biting his knuckles. Their voices grew sometimes louder, sometimes softer; Bergon gestured, and Iselle twice laughed out loud, and three times drew in her breath, her hands going to her lips, eyes widening. Iselle lowered her voice and spoke earnestly; Bergon tilted his head and listened intently, and never took his eyes from her face, except twice to glance out at Cazaril, after which they lowered their voices still further.

Lady Betriz brought him a glass of watered wine, nodding at his grateful thanks. Cazaril felt he could guess who had taken the thought to have the hot water and servants and food and clothes waiting ready for him. Her fresh skin glowed golden in the candlelight, smooth and youthful, but her somber dress and pulled-back hair lent her an unexpectedly mature elegance. An ardent energy, on the verge of moving into power and wisdom . . .

“How did you leave things in Valenda, do you think?” Cazaril asked her.

Her smile sobered. “Tense. But we hope with Iselle drawn out, it will grow less so. Surely dy Jironal will not dare offer violence to the widow and mother-in-law of Roya Ias?”

“Mm, not as his first move. In desperation, anything becomes possible.”

“That’s true. Or at least, people stop arguing with you about what’s possible and what’s not.”

Cazaril considered the young women’s wild night ride that had flipped their tactical situation so abruptly topside-to. “How did you get away?”

“Well, dy Jironal had apparently expected us all to cower in the castle, intimidated by his show of arms. You can imagine how that sat with the old Provincara. His women spies watched Iselle all the time, but not me. I took Nan and we went about the town, doing little domestic errands for the household, and observing. His men’s defenses all faced outward, prepared to repel would-be rescuers. And no one could keep us from going to the temple, where Lord dy Palliar stayed, to pray for Orico’s health.” Her smile dimpled. “We became very pious, for a time.” The dimple faded. “Then the Provincara got word, I don’t know through what source, that the chancellor had dispatched his younger son with a troop of his House cavalry to secure Iselle and bring her in haste back to Cardegoss, because Orico was dying. Which may be true, for all we know, but all the better reason not to place herself in dy Jironal’s hands. So escape became urgent, and it was done.”

Palli had drifted over to listen; dy Baocia strolled up to join them.

Cazaril gave dy Baocia a nod. “Your lady mother wrote me of promises of support from your fellow provincars. Have you gained any more assurances?”

Dy Baocia rattled off a list of names of men he had written to, or heard from. It was not as long as Cazaril would have liked.

“Thus words. What of troops?”

Dy Baocia shrugged. “Two of my neighbors have promised more material support to Iselle, at need. They don’t relish the sight of the chancellor’s personal troops occupying one of my towns any more than I do. The third—well, he’s married to one of dy Jironal’s daughters. He sits tight for the moment, saying as little as possible to anyone.”

“Understandable. Where is dy Jironal now, does anyone know?”

“In Cardegoss, we think,” said Palli. “The Daughter’s military order still remains without a holy general. Dy Jironal feared to absent himself for long from Orico’s side lest dy Yarrin get in and persuade Orico to his party. Orico himself is hanging by a thread, dy Yarrin reports secretly to me. Sick, but not, I think, witless; the roya seems to be using his own illness to delay decision, trying to offend no one.”

“Sounds very like him.” Cazaril fingered his beard and glanced up at dy Baocia. “Speaking of the Temple’s soldiers, how large a force of the Brother’s Order is stationed in Taryoon?”

“Just a company, about two hundred men,” the provincar answered. “We are not garrisoned heavily like Guarida or other of the provinces bordering the Roknari princedoms.”

That was two hundred men inside Taryoon’s walls, Cazaril reflected.

Dy Baocia read his look. “The archdivine will have speech with their commander later tonight. I think the marriage treaty will do much to persuade him that the new Heiress is loyal to, ah, the future of Chalion.”

“Still, they do have their oaths of obedience,” murmured Palli. “It would be preferable not to strain them to breaking.”

Cazaril considered riding times and distances. “Word of Iselle’s flight from Valenda will surely have reached Cardegoss by now. News of Bergon’s arrival must follow on its heels. At that point dy Jironal will see the regency he counted upon slipping through his fingers.”

Dy Baocia smiled in elation. “At that point, it will be over. Events are moving much faster than he—or indeed, anyone—could have anticipated.” The sidelong look he cast Cazaril tinged respect with awe.

“Better that way,” said Cazaril. “He must not be pricked into making moves he cannot later back away from.” If two sides, both cursed, struck against each other in civil war, it was perfectly possible for both sides to lose. It would be the perfect culmination of the Golden General’s death gift for all of Chalion to collapse in upon itself in such agony. Winning consisted of finessing the struggle so as to avert bloodshed. Although when Bergon moved Iselle out of the shadow, it would presumably leave poor Orico still in it, and dy Jironal sharing his nominal master’s fate . . . And what of Ista, then? “Bluntly, much depends upon when the roya dies. He could linger, you know.” The curse would surely twist Orico toward whatever fate was most ghastly. This would seem a more reliable guide if there were not so very many ways disasters could play out. Umegat’s menagerie had been averting, Cazaril realized, a deal more evil than just ill health. “Looking ahead, we must consider what sops to offer to Chancellor dy Jironal’s pride—both before Iselle’s ascent to the royacy, and after.”

“I don’t think he’ll be content with sops, Caz,” Palli objected. “He’s been roya of Chalion in all but name for over a decade.”

“Then surely he must be getting tired,” sighed Cazaril. “Some plums to his sons would soften him. Family loyalty is his weakness, his blind side.” Or so the curse suggested, which deformed all virtue to an obverse vice. “Ease him out, but show favor to his clan . . . pull his teeth slowly and gently, and it’s done.” He glanced up at Betriz, listening intently; yes, she could be counted on to report this debate to Iselle, later.

In the other chamber, Iselle and Bergon rose. She laid her hand on his proffered arm, and they both stole shy glances at their partner; two persons looking more pleased with each other, Cazaril was hard put to imagine. Although when Iselle entered the reception room with her fiancé and glanced around triumphantly at the assembled company, she looked quite as pleased with herself. Bergon’s pride had a slightly more dazzled air, though he spared Cazaril, scrambling up from his seat, a reassuringly determined nod.

“The Heiress of Chalion,” said Iselle, and paused.

“And the Heir of Ibra,” Bergon put in.

“Are pleased to announce that we will take our marriage oaths,” Iselle continued, “before the gods, our noble Ibran guests, and the people of this town . . .”

“In the temple of Taryoon at noon upon the day after tomorrow,” Bergon finished.

The little crowd broke into cheers and congratulations. And, Cazaril had no doubt, calculations of the speed at which a column of enemy troops might ride; to which the answer worked out, Not that fast. United and mutually strengthened, the two young leaders could move at need thereafter in close coordination. Once Iselle was married out from under the curse, time was on their side. Every day would gain them more support. Unstrung by the most profound relief, Cazaril sank back into his chair, grinning with the pain of the anguished cramp in his gut.

In a palace frantic with preparations, Cazaril found himself the next day the only man with nothing to do. Iselle had arrived in Taryoon with little more than the clothes she rode in; all of Cazaril’s correspondence and books of her chambers were still in Cardegoss. When he attempted to wait upon her and inquire what duties she desired of him, he found her rooms crammed with mildly hysterical tire-women being directed by her Aunt dy Baocia, all charging in and out with piles of garments in their arms.

Iselle fought her head out through a swaddling of silks to gasp, “You’ve just ridden over eight hundred miles on my behalf. Go rest, Cazaril.” She held her arm out obediently while a woman tried a sleeve upon it. “No, better—compose two letters for my uncle’s clerk to copy out, one to all the provincars of Chalion, and one to every Temple archdivine, announcing my marriage. Something they can read out to the people. That should be a nice, quiet task. When you have all seventeen—no, sixteen—”

“Seventeen,” put in her aunt, from the vicinity of her hem. “Your uncle will want one for his chancellery records. Stand straight.”

“When all are made ready, set them aside for me and Bergon to sign tomorrow after the wedding, and then see that they are sent out.” She nodded firmly, to the annoyance of the tire-woman trying to adjust her neckline.

Cazaril bowed himself out before he was stuck with a pin, and leaned a moment over the gallery railing.

The day was exquisitely fair, promising spring. The sky was a pale-washed blue, and mild sunlight flooded the newly paved courtyard, where gardeners were carting in orange trees in full flower in tubs, rolling them out to stand around the now-bubbling fountain. He diverted a passing servant and had a writing table brought out and set in the sun for himself. And a chair with a thick, soft cushion, because while a lot of those eight hundred miles were now a blur in his mind, his backside seemed to remember them all. He leaned back with the warm light falling on his face, and his eyes closed, composing his periods, then bent forward to scribble. Dy Baocia’s clerk carried off the results for copying out in a much fairer hand than Cazaril’s soon enough, and then he just leaned back with his eyes closed, period.

He didn’t even open them for the approaching footsteps, till a clank on his table surprised him. He looked up to find a servant, directed by Lady Betriz, setting down a tray with tea, a jug of milk, a dish of dried fruit, and bread glazed with nuts and honey. She dismissed the servant and poured the tea herself, and pressed the bread upon him, sitting on the edge of the fountain to watch him eat it.

“Your face looks very gaunt again. Haven’t you been eating properly?” she inquired severely.

“I have no idea. What lovely sunshine this is! I hope it holds through tomorrow.”

“Lady dy Baocia thinks it will, though she said we might have rain again by the Daughter’s Day.”

The scent of the orange blossoms pooled in the shelter of the court, seeming to mix with the honey in his mouth. He swallowed tea to chase the bread and observed in idle wonder, “In three days’ time it will be exactly a year since I walked into the castle of Valenda. I wanted to be a scullion.”

Her dimple flashed. “I remember. It was last Daughter’s Day eve that we first met each other, at the Provincara’s table.”

“Oh, I saw you before that. Riding into the courtyard with Iselle and . . . and Teidez.” And poor dy Sanda.

She looked stricken. “You did? Where were you? I didn’t see you.”

“Sitting on the bench by the wall. You were too busy being scolded by your father for galloping to notice me.”

“Oh.” She sighed, and trailed her hand through the fountain’s little pool, then shook off the cold drops with a frown. The Daughter of Spring might have breathed out today’s air, but it was still Old Winter’s water. “It seems a hundred years ago, not just one.”

“To me, it seems an eye blink. Time . . . outruns me now. Which explains why I wheeze so, no doubt.” He added quietly after a moment, “Has Iselle confided to her uncle about the curse we seek to break tomorrow?”

“No, of course not.” At his raised brows, she added, “Iselle is Ista’s daughter. She cannot speak of it, lest men say she is mad, too. And use it as an excuse to seize . . . everything. Dy Jironal thought of it. At Teidez’s interment, he never missed a chance to pass some little comment on Iselle to any lord or provincar in earshot. If she wept, wasn’t it too extravagant; if she laughed, how odd that she should do so at her brother’s funeral; if she spoke, he whispered that she was frenetic; if she fell silent, wasn’t she grown strangely gloomy? And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not. Toward the end of his visit there, he even said such things in her hearing, to see if he could frighten and enrage her, and then accuse her of becoming an unbalanced virago. And he circulated outright lies, as well. But I and Nan and the Provincara were onto his little game by then, and we warned Iselle, and she kept her temper in his company.”

“Ah. Excellent girl.”

She nodded. “But as soon as we heard the chancellor’s men were coming to fetch her back to Cardegoss, Iselle was frantic to escape Valenda. Because once he’d got her close-confined, he could put about any story he pleased of her behavior, and who would there be to deny it? He might get the provincars of Chalion to approve the extension of his regency for the poor mad girl for as long as he pleased, without ever having to raise a sword.” She took a breath. “And so she dares not mention the curse.”

“I see. She is wise to be wary. Well, the gods willing it will soon be over.”

“The gods and the Castillar dy Cazaril.”

He made a little warding gesture and took another sip of tea. “When did dy Jironal learn I was gone to Ibra?”

“I don’t think he guessed anything till after the cortege reached Valenda, and you weren’t to be found there. The old Provincara said he received some reports from his Ibran spies—I think that’s partly why, anxious as he was to get back and block dy Yarrin from Orico, he would not leave Valenda till he had his own household troops installed there.”

“He sent assassins to intercept me at the border. I wonder if he thought I would just be returning alone, with the next round of negotiations? I don’t think he expected Royse Bergon so soon.”

“No one did. Except Iselle.” She rubbed her fingers across the fine black wool of her vest-cloak lying over her knee. Her next glance up at him was uncomfortably penetrating. “While you have spent yourself trying to save Iselle . . . have you discovered how to save yourself?”

He was silent a moment, then said simply, “No.”

“It’s . . . it’s not right.”

He glanced vaguely around the deliciously sunny court, avoiding her eyes. “I like this nice new building. It has no ghosts in it at all, do you know?”

“You’re changing the subject.” Her frown deepened. “You do that a lot when you don’t want to talk about something. I just realized.”

“Betriz . . .” He softened his voice. “Our feet were set on different paths from the night I called down death upon Dondo. I can’t go back. You are going to be living, and I am not. We can’t go on together, even if . . . well, we just can’t.”

“You don’t know how much time you’re given. It could be weeks. Months. But if an hour is all the gift the gods give us, all the more insult to the gods to scorn it.”

“It’s not the shortage of time.” He shifted miserably. “It’s the abundance of company. Think of us alone together—you, me, Dondo, the death demon . . . am I not a horror to you?” His tone grew almost pleading. “I assure you I’m a horror to me!”

She glanced at his gut, then stared off across the courtyard, her jaw set mulishly. “I do not believe that being haunted is catching. Do you think I lack the courage?”

“Never that,” he breathed.

She addressed her feet in a growl. “I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”

“What, didn’t you read old Ordol’s book while you were helping Iselle cipher those letters? He claims that the gods, and we, are both right here all the time, a shadow’s thickness apart. We’ve no distance to cross at all to get to each other.” I can see their world from where I sit, in fact. So Ordol was right. “But you cannot force the gods. It’s only fair, I suppose. They cannot force us, either.”

“You’re doing it again. Twisting the topic.”

“What are you planning to wear tomorrow? Shall it be pretty? You’re not allowed to outshine the bride, you know.”

She glared at him.

Up on the gallery, Lady dy Baocia popped out of Iselle’s chambers and called down to Betriz a complicated question involving what seemed to Cazaril a great many different fabrics. Betriz waved back and rose reluctantly to her feet. She flung rather sharply over her shoulder, as she made for the staircase, “Well, that may all be so, and you as doomed as you please, but if I’m thrown from a horse tomorrow and break my neck, I hope you feel a fool!”

“More of a fool,” he murmured to the swish of her retreating skirts. The bright courtyard was a blur in his disobedient eyes, and he rubbed them clear with a hard, surreptitious swipe of his sleeve.

THE WEDDING DAY DAWNED AS FAIR AS HOPED. The orange-blossom-scented courtyard was crowded as it could hold when Iselle, attended by her aunt and Betriz, appeared at the top of the gallery stairs. Cazaril tilted his face up and squinted happily. The tire-women had performed heroic feats with silks and satins, garbing her in all the shades of blue proper for a bride. Her blue vest-cloak was trimmed with as many Ibran pearls as could be found in Taryoon, patterned as a frieze of stylized leopards. A smattering of applause broke out as, moving a little stiffly in all her finery, she smiled and descended the steps. Her hair gleamed like a river of treasure in the sunlight. Two dy Baocia girl-cousins managed her train, under the sporadic direction of their mother. Even the curse seemed to wrap about her like some trailing sable robe. But not for much longer . . .

Cazaril obediently fell in beside Provincar dy Baocia, and so found himself helping to lead the parade afoot through twisting streets to Taryoon’s nearby temple. Through a wonder of coordination, Bergon’s procession from March dy Huesta’s palace arrived at the temple portico simultaneously with Iselle’s. The royse wore the reds and oranges of his age and sex, and an expression of determined bravery that would not have been out of place on a man storming a bastion. Palli and his dozen soldier-brothers in court dress of their order had joined the royse’s party along with Foix and Ferda, so as not to let the Ibrans look, and perhaps feel, so outnumbered. Despite the short notice, Cazaril calculated that over a thousand persons of rank crowded into the temple’s round center court; and what seemed the entire citizenry of Taryoon lined the routes of the royesse and royse. A festival mood had clearly seized the city.

The two processions coalesced in a swirl of color and entered the sacred precincts. Taryoon had good temple singers, and the enthusiastic choir made the walls fairly ring with their songs. The young couple, led by the archdivine, entered each of the temple’s lobes in turn. They knelt and prayed upon new carpets for the blessing of each god: to the Daughter and the Son, in thanks for their protection in life’s journey so far; and to the Mother and the Father, in hopes of passing into their company in due course.

By theology and tradition, the Bastard had no official place in a ceremony of marriage, but all prudent couples sent a placating gift anyway. Cazaril and dy Tagille had been commissioned to play holy couriers today. They received the offerings from Bergon and Iselle and, along with a small but earnestly loud detachment of singing children, marched around the outside of the main building to the Bastard’s tower. A smiling, white-robed divine stood ready to receive them inside at the altar.

The royal couple had been forced to borrow clothes, money, food, and housing for this day, but Bergon did not shortchange the god; dy Tagille laid down a fat purse of Ibran gold along with his prayers. Iselle sent a promise, written in her own hand, to undertake payment of roof repairs upon the Bastard’s tower in Cardegoss when she became royina there. Cazaril added a gift of his own—the blood-tainted rope of pearls, all the residue of Dondo’s broken string that had not fallen to the brigands. Such a difficult and cursed item was, absolutely without question, the god’s just affair, and Cazaril breathed a sigh of relief when it was off his hands at last.

Proceeding back along the walkway from the Bastard’s tower behind the slightly wobbly choir of urchins, Cazaril glanced at the crowd and caught his breath. A man, middle-aged—around him hung a subdued gray light like a winter’s day. When Cazaril closed his eyes, the faint light still glowed there. He looked again with his first sight. The man wore the black-and-gray robes and red shoulder braid of an officer of the Taryoon Municipal Court—probably a petty judge. And petty saint of the Father, as Clara had been of the Mother in Cardegoss . . . ?

The man was staring back at Cazaril in openmouthed astonishment, his face drained. There was no chance for them to exchange any word here, as Cazaril was drawn back into the ceremonies inside the high, echoing court of the temple, but Cazaril resolved to ask the archdivine about him at the first opportunity.

At the central fire, the newly married royse and royesse each made a short speech, then the archdivine, Cazaril, and everyone else paraded back through the banner-hung streets to dy Baocia’s new palace. There, a grand feast was laid on to fill the afternoon and the celebrators to happy repletion. The food was all the more amazing for having been assembled in just two days; Cazaril suspected supplies had been robbed from the Daughter’s Day festival, coming up. But he didn’t think the goddess would begrudge them. As principal guests, both Cazaril and the archdivine had places to hold, so he didn’t get a chance for private speech until the after-dinner music and dancing drew the younger people off to the courtyards. At that point, the two men he sought found him.

The petty judge stood at the archdivine’s shoulder looking unnerved. Cazaril and he exchanged a sidelong look as the archdivine performed a hasty introduction.

“My lord dy Cazaril—may I present to you the Honorable Paginine. He serves the municipality of Taryoon . . .” The archdivine lowered his voice. “He says you are god-touched. Is this so?”

“Alas, yes,” sighed Cazaril. Paginine nodded in an I thought so sort of way. Cazaril glanced around and drew the pair aside. It was hard to find a private spot; they ended up in a tiny inner court off one of the palace’s side entrances. Music and laughter carried through the darkening air. A servant lit torches in wall brackets and returned inside. Overhead, high clouds moved across the first stars.

“Your colleague the archdivine of Cardegoss knows all about me,” Cazaril told the archdivine of Taryoon.

“Oh.” The archdivine blinked and looked vastly relieved. Cazaril thought it was a misplaced confidence, but he elected not to rob it from him. “Mendenal is an excellent fellow.”

“The Father of Winter has given you some gift, I see,” Cazaril said to the petty judge. “What is it?”

Paginine ducked his head nervously. “Sometimes—not every time—He permits me to know who is lying in my justiciar’s chamber, and who is telling the truth.” Paginine hesitated. “It doesn’t always do as much good as you’d think.”

Cazaril vented a short laugh.

Paginine brightened visibly to both Cazaril’s inner and outer eye, and smiled dryly. “Ah, you understand.”

“Oh, yes.”

“But you, sir . . .” Paginine turned to the archdivine with a troubled look. “I said god-touched, but that hardly describes what I’m seeing. It . . . it almost hurts to look at him. Three times since I was given the sight I have met others who are also god-afflicted, but I’ve never seen anything like him.”

“Saint Umegat in Cardegoss said I looked like a burning city,” Cazaril admitted.

“That’s . . .” Paginine eyed him sidewise. “That’s well put.”

“He was a man of words.” Once.

“What is your gift?”

“I, uh . . . I think I am the gift, actually. To the Royesse Iselle.”

The archdivine touched his hand to his lips, then hastily signed himself. “So that explains the stories circulating about you!”

“What stories?” said Cazaril in bewilderment.

“But Lord Cazaril,” the judge broke in, “what is that terrible shadow hanging about Royesse Iselle? That is no godly thing! Do you see it, too?”

“I’m . . . working on it. Getting rid of that ugly thing seems to be my god-given task. I think I’m almost done.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.” Paginine looked much happier.

Cazaril realized he wanted nothing so much as to take Paginine aside to talk shop. How do you deal with these matters? The archdivine might be pious, perhaps a good administrator, possibly a learned theologian, but Cazaril suspected he didn’t understand the discomforts of the saint trade. Paginine’s bitter smile told all. Cazaril wanted to go get drunk with him, and compare complaints.

To Cazaril’s embarrassment, the archdivine bowed low to him, and said in an awed, hushed voice, “Blessed Sir, is there anything I can do for you?”

Betriz’s question echoed in his mind, Have you discovered how to save yourself? Maybe you couldn’t save yourself. Maybe you had to take turns saving each other . . . “Tonight, no. Tomorrow . . . later in the week, there is a personal matter I should like to wait upon you about. If I may.”

“Certainly, Blessed Sir. I am at your service.”

They returned to the party. Cazaril was exhausted, and longed for bed, but the courtyard below his chamber door was full of noisy revelers. A breathless Betriz asked him once to dance, from which exercise he smilingly excused himself; she didn’t lack for partners. Her gaze checked him often, as he sat watching from the wall and nursing his watered wine. He did not lack for company, as a string of men and women struck up friendly conversations with him, angling for employment in the future royina’s court. To all of them he returned courteous but noncommittal replies.

The Ibran lords were collecting Chalionese ladies rather as spilled honey collected ants, and looking very happy indeed. Halfway through the evening, Lord dy Cembuer arrived, completing their company and their delight. The Ibrans exchanged tales of their respective journeys, to the awe and fascination of their eager Chalionese listeners. To Cazaril’s intense political pleasure, Bergon was cast as the hero of this romantic adventure, with Iselle no less as heroine for her night ride from Valenda. As appealing unifying myths went, this one was going to beat dy Jironal’s feeble fable of Poor Mad Iselle all hollow, Cazaril rather thought. And our tale is true!

At last came the hour and the ceremony Cazaril had been breathlessly awaiting, where Bergon and Iselle were conducted up to their bedchamber. Neither, Cazaril was pleased to note, had drunk enough to become inebriated. Since his own wine had somehow grown less watered as the evening progressed, he found himself a little tongue-tied when the royse and royesse called him up to the foot of the staircase to give and receive ceremonial kisses of thanks upon their hands. Moved, he signed himself and called down hopeful blessings on their heads. The solemn grateful intensity of their return gazes discomfited him.

Lady dy Baocia had arranged a small choir to sing prayers to waft the couple on their way upstairs; the crystal voices served to suppress the ribaldry to manageable proportions. Iselle was no more than beautifully blushing and starry-eyed when she and Bergon leaned over the railing to give smiling thanks to all, and throw down flowers.

They disappeared into the candlelit glow of their suite, and the doors swung shut behind them. Two of dy Baocia’s officers took up station on the gallery to guard their repose. In a little while, most of the tire-women and attendants emerged, including Lady Betriz. She was instantly carried off by Palli and dy Tagille for more dancing.

The revels looked to continue till dawn, but to Cazaril’s relief a misty rain began to sift down out of the chilling sky, driving the musicians and dancers out of his courtyard and indoors to the adjoining building. Slowly, his hand heavy on the railing, Cazaril climbed the stairs to his own chamber, around the gallery corner from the royse and royesse’s. My duty is done. Now what?

He scarcely knew. A vast moral terror seemed lifted from his shoulders. Only he would live and die by his choices—and mistakes—now. I refuse to regret. I will not look back. A moment of balance, on the cusp of past and future.

He rather thought he would look up the little judge again tomorrow. The man’s company might well relieve his loneliness.

ACTUALLY, I’M NOT NEARLY LONELY ENOUGH, he thought not much later as Dondo’s incoherent obscene bellows, released by their hour of ascendance, came roaring up to his inward ear. The sundered ghost was more wild with fury tonight than Cazaril had ever experienced it, its last vestiges of intelligence and sanity shredding away in its rage. Cazaril could imagine why, and grinned through his agony as he rolled on his bed, curled around the ghastly pulsing pain in his belly.

He almost blacked out, then forced himself up, and to consciousness, horrified by the possibility that the fiendishly aroused Dondo might try to take over his body while he was still alive in it and use it for some vile assault upon Iselle and Bergon. He writhed on the floor in something resembling convulsions, choking back the screams and filth that tried to fly from his mouth, no longer sure whose words they were.

When the attack passed, he lay panting on the cold boards, his nightgown rucked up around himself, his fingernails torn and bloody. He had vomited, and lay in it. He touched his wet beard to find spittle flayed to foam hanging around his lips. His stomach—or had that grotesque out-bulging been a dream?—had returned to its former mild distension, though his whole abdominal sheet still ached and quivered like torn muscles after some overtorqued exertion.

I can’t go on like this much longer. Something had to give way—his body, his sanity, his breath. His faith. Something.

He rose, and cleaned up the floor, and washed himself at his basin and found a clean dry shirt for a nightdress, then straightened his sweat-stained twisted sheets, lit all the candles in the room, and crawled back into bed. He lay eyes wide, devouring the light.

AT LENGTH, THE SOUNDS OF SERVANTS’ MURMURS and quiet footsteps along the gallery told him the palace was awakening. He must have dozed, for his candles were burned out, and he didn’t remember them guttering. Gray light seeped in under his door and through his shutters.

There would be morning prayers. Morning prayers seemed a good plan, even if the idea of attempting to move was daunting. Cazaril rose. Slowly. Well, his wasn’t going to be the only hangover in Taryoon this morning. Even if he hadn’t been drunk. The household had put off court mourning for the wedding; he selected among the garments that had been bestowed upon him, achieving what he hoped was a sober yet cheerful result.

He went down to the courtyard to await the sun and the young people. No sun was to be had yet; the rain had stopped, but the sky was clouded and chill. Cazaril used his handkerchief to dry the stone edge of the fountain and seated himself. He exchanged a smile and a good morning with an old servingwoman who passed by with linens. A crow stalked about on the far end of the courtyard, looking for dropped scraps of food. Cazaril exchanged a tilted stare with it, but the bird evinced no special fascination with him. Upon consideration, he was more relieved than otherwise at its avian indifference.

At last, up on the gallery, the doors Cazaril was waiting for swung open. The sleepy Baocian guards bracketing them stood to attention. Women’s voices sounded, and one man’s, low and cheerful. Bergon and Iselle appeared, dressed for morning prayers, her hand set lightly upon his proffered arm. They swung about to descend the stairs side by side, and stepped out of the gallery’s shadow.

No . . . the shadow followed them.

Cazaril squeezed his eyes shut and open again. His breath stopped.

The choking cloud that wrapped Iselle, now wrapped Bergon, too.

Iselle smiled across at her husband, and Bergon smiled back at her; last night, they had looked excited and tired and a little scared. This morning, they looked like two people in love. With blackness boiling up around them both like the smoke from a burning ship.

As they approached, Iselle sang him a cheerful, “Good morning, Lord Caz!”

Bergon grinned, and said, “Will you not join us, sir? We have much to give thanks together for this morning, do we not?”

Cazaril’s lips drew back on the travesty of a smile. “I . . . I . . . a little later. I left something in my room.”

He heaved himself up and rushed past them up the stairs. He turned and looked again from the gallery as they passed out of the courtyard. Still trailing shadows.

He slammed the door of his chamber behind himself and stood gasping, almost weeping. Gods. Gods. What have I done?

I haven’t freed Iselle. I’ve cursed Bergon.

Distraught, Cazaril kept to his chamber all morning. In the afternoon a page knocked, with the unwelcome news that the royse and royesse desired him to attend upon them in their rooms. Cazaril considered feigning illness, though he hardly need feign. No, for Iselle would surely bring physicians down upon him, probably in packs—he remembered the last time, with Rojeras, and shuddered. With a boundless reluctance, he straightened his garments, making himself presentable, and walked out around the gallery to the royal suite.

The sitting room’s high casement windows were open to the cool spring light. Iselle and Bergon, still in festive dress from the noon banquet at the March dy Huesta’s palace, awaited him. They sat around the corner from each other at a table that bore paper, parchment, and new pens, with a third chair pulled invitingly to the other side. Their heads, amber and brown, were bent together in low-voiced conversation. The shadow still boiled slowly around them, viscous as hot tar. At Cazaril’s step, they both looked up at him and smiled. He moistened his lips and bowed, his face stiff.

Iselle gestured at the papers. “Our next most urgent task is to compose a letter to my brother Orico, to acquaint him of the steps we have taken, and assure him of our most loyal submission. I think we should include extracts of all the articles of our marriage most favorable to Chalion, to help reconcile him to it, don’t you think?”

Cazaril cleared his throat and swallowed.

Bergon’s brows drew inward. “Caz, you look as pale as a . . . um. Are you all right? Please, sit down!”

Cazaril managed a tiny headshake. Again he was tempted to flee into some malingering lie—or half-truth, now, for he was feeling sick enough. “Nothing is all right,” he whispered. He sank to one knee before the royse. “I have made a vast mistake. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Iselle’s wary, startled face blurred in his vision. “Lord Caz . . . ?”

“Your marriage”—he swallowed again, and forced his numb lips to speak on—“has not lifted the curse from Iselle as I’d hoped. Instead, it has spread it to you both.”

“What?” breathed Bergon.

Tears clogged Cazaril’s voice. “And now I know not what to do . . .”

“How do you know this?” Iselle asked urgently.

“I can see it. I can see it on you both now. If anything, it’s even darker and thicker. More grasping.”

Bergon’s lips parted in dismay. “Did I . . . did we do something wrong? Somehow?”

“No, no! But both Sara and Ista married into the House of Chalion, and into the curse. I thought it was because men and women were different, that it somehow followed the male line of Fonsa’s heirs along with the name.”

“But I am Fonsa’s heir, too,” said Iselle slowly. “And flesh and blood are more than just names. When two become wed, it doesn’t mean that one disappears and only the other remains. We are joined, not subsumed. Oh, is there nothing we can do? There must be something!”

“Ista said,” Cazaril began, and stopped. He was not at all sure he wanted to tell these two decisive young people what Ista had said. Iselle might take thought again . . .

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be, Iselle had cried. It was much too late to shelter her now. By the wrath of the gods, she was to be the next royina of Chalion. With the right to rule came the duty to protect—the privilege of receiving protection had to be left behind with childhood’s other toys. Even protection from bitter knowledge. Especially from knowledge.

Cazaril swallowed to unlock his throat. “Ista said there was another way.”

He climbed into the chair and sat heavily. In a broken voice, in terms so plain as to be almost brutal, Cazaril repeated the tale Ista had told him of Lord dy Lutez, Roya Ias, and her vision of the goddess. Of the two dark hellish nights in the Zangre’s dungeons with the bound man and the vat of icy water. When he finished, both his listeners were pale and staring.

“I thought—I feared—I might be the one,” Cazaril said. “Because of the night I tried to barter my life for Dondo’s death. I was terrified that I might be the one. Iselle’s dy Lutez, as Ista named me. But I swear before all the gods, if I thought it would work, I’d have you take me outside right now and drown me in the courtyard fountain. Twice. But I cannot become the sacrifice now. My second death must be my last, for the death demon will fly away with my soul and Dondo’s, and I don’t see how there can be any getting it back into my body then.” He rubbed his wet eyes with the back of his hand.

Bergon gazed at his new wife as if his eyes could swallow her. He finally said huskily, “What about me?”

“What?” said Iselle.

“I undertook to come here to save you from this thing. So, the method’s just got a little harder, that’s all. I’m not afraid of the water. What if you drowned me?”

Cazaril’s and Iselle’s instant protests tumbled out together; Cazaril gave way with a little wave of his hand. Iselle repeated, “It was tried once. It was tried, and it didn’t work. I’m not about to drown either one of you, thank you very much! No, nor hang you either, nor any other horrid thing you can think of. No!”

“Besides,” Cazaril put in, “the goddess’s words were, a man must lay down his life three times for the House of Chalion. Not of the House of Chalion.” At least, according to Ista. Had she repeated her vision verbatim? Or did her words embed some treacherous error? Never mind, so long as they deterred Bergon from his horrifying suggestion. “I don’t think you can break the curse from the inside, or it would have been Ias, not dy Lutez, who put himself into the barrel. And, five gods forgive me, Bergon, you are now inside this thing.”

“It feels wrong anyway,” said Iselle, her eyes narrowing. “Some kind of cheat. What was that thing you told me Saint Umegat said, when you’d asked him what you should do? About daily duties?”

“He said I should do my daily duties as they came to me.”

“Well, and so. Surely the gods are not done with us.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. “It occurs to me . . . my mother lay down twice in childbed for the House of Chalion. She never had the chance for a third such trial. That is certainly a duty that the gods give to one.”

Cazaril considered the havoc that the curse might wreak, intersecting with the hazards of pregnancy and childbirth as it had intersected with the chances of Ias’s and Orico’s battles, and shivered. Barrenness like Sara’s was the least of the potential disasters. “Five gods, Iselle, I think we’d do better to put me into the barrel.”

“And besides,” said Bergon, “the goddess said a man. She did say a man, didn’t She, Caz?”

“Uh . . . that was Lady Ista’s account of the words, yes.”

“The divines say, when the gods instruct men in their pious duties, they mean women, too,” Iselle growled. “You can’t have it both ways. Anyway, I lived under the curse for sixteen years, unknowing. I survived somehow.”

But it’s getting worse now. Stronger. Teidez’s death seemed a fair example to Cazaril of its working out—the boy’s special strengths and virtues, few as they had been, all twisted to a dire ill. Iselle and Bergon between them had many strengths and virtues. The scope for the curse’s distortions was immense.

Iselle and Bergon were gripping hands across the tabletop. Iselle knuckled her eyes with her free hand, pinched the bridge of her nose, and sniffed deeply.

“Curse or no curse,” she said, “we must make dutiful submission to Orico, and at once. So that dy Jironal cannot declare me to be in revolt. If only I were by Orico, I know I could persuade him of the benefit of this marriage to Chalion!”

“Orico is very persuadable,” Cazaril admitted dryly. “It’s making him stay persuaded that’s the difficult part.”

“Yes, and I don’t forget for a moment that dy Jironal is with Orico in Cardegoss. My greatest fear is that the chancellor may, upon hearing this news, somehow persuade Orico to again change the terms of his will.”

“Attach enough of the provincars of Chalion to your party, Royesse, and they may be willing to help you resist any such late codicils.”

Iselle frowned deeply. “I wish we might go up to Cardegoss. I should be by Orico, if this proves to be his deathbed. We should be in the capital when events unfold.”

Cazaril paused, then said, “Difficult. You must not put yourself in dy Jironal’s hands.”

“I had not planned to go unattended.” Her smile flashed darkly, like the moon on a knife blade. “But we should seize every legal nicety as well as every tactical advantage. It would be well to remind the lords of Chalion that all the chancellor’s legal power flows to him through the roya. Only.”

Bergon said uneasily, “You know the man better than I do. Do you think dy Jironal will just sit still at this news?”

“The longer he can be induced to sit, the better. We gain support daily.”

“Have you heard anything of dy Jironal’s response?” Cazaril asked.

“Not yet,” said Bergon.

The time lag ran both ways, alas. “Let me know at once if you do.” Cazaril drew a long breath, flattened out a clean sheet of paper, and picked up a quill. “Now. How do you two wish to style yourselves . . . ?”

THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO DELIVER THIS POLITICALLY vital missive was a trifle delicate, Cazaril reflected, crossing the courtyard below the royal chambers with the signed and sealed document in his hands. It would not do to toss it into a courier bag for delivery at the gallop to the Zangre Chancellery. The article needed a delegation of men of rank not only to give it, and Iselle and Bergon, the proper weight, but also to assure that it was delivered to Orico and not dy Jironal. Trustworthy men must read the letter out accurately to the dying roya in his blindness, and give politic answers to any questions Orico might have about his sister’s precipitate nuptials. Lords and divines—some of each, Cazaril decided. Iselle’s uncle was fitted to recommend suitable men who might ride out fast, and tonight. His stride lengthened, as he started in search of a page or servant to tell him dy Baocia’s whereabouts.

Under the tiled archway into the court, he met Palli and dy Baocia himself, hurrying in. They, too, both still wore their banquet garb.

“Caz!” Palli hailed him. “Where were you at dinner?”

“Resting. I . . . had a bad night.”

“What, and here I’d have sworn you were the only one of us who went to bed sober.”

Cazaril let this one pass. “What’s this?”

Palli held up a sheaf of opened letters. “News from dy Yarrin in Cardegoss, sent in haste by Temple courier. I thought the royse and royesse should know at once. Dy Jironal rode out of the Zangre before midmorning yesterday, none knows where.”

“Did he take troops—no, tell it once. Come on.” Cazaril turned on his heel and led the way back up the gallery stairs to the royal chambers. One of Iselle’s servants admitted them, and went to bring the young couple out to the sitting room again. While they were waiting Cazaril showed them the letter to Orico and explained its contents. The provincar nodded judiciously, and named some likely lords for the task of carrying it to Cardegoss.

Iselle and Bergon entered, Iselle still patting her braided hair into place, and the three men bowed to them. Royse Bergon, at once alert to the papers in Palli’s hand, bade them be seated around the table.

Palli repeated his news of dy Jironal. “The chancellor took only a light force of his household cavalry. It seemed to dy Yarrin that he meant to ride either a short way, or very fast.”

“What news of my brother Orico?” asked Iselle.

“Well, here . . .” Palli passed the letter to her for examination. “With dy Jironal out of the way, dy Yarrin tried at once to get in to see the roya, but Royina Sara said he was asleep, and refused to disturb his rest for any supplication. Since she had undertaken to smuggle in dy Yarrin before despite dy Jironal, he fears the roya may have taken a turn for the worse.”

“What’s the other letter?” asked Bergon.

“Old news, but interesting all the same,” said Palli. “Cazaril, what in the world is the old archdivine saying about you? The commander of the Taryoon troop of the Order of the Son came to me, all a-tremble—he seems to think you’re god-touched and dares not approach you. He wanted to talk to a man who bore Temple oaths like himself. He’d received a copy of an order that had gone out from the Chancellery to all the military posts of the Order of the Son in western Chalion—for your arrest, if it please you, for treason. You are slandered—”

“Again?” murmured Cazaril, taking the letter.

“And accused of sneaking into Ibra to sell Chalion to the Fox. Which, since all the world now knows the real case, falls a trifle flat.”

Cazaril scanned down the order. “I see. This was his net to catch me if his assassins failed at the border. He set it out a bit too late, I’m afraid. As you say, old news.”

“Yes, but it has a sequel. This obedient fool of a troop commander sent a letter in turn to dy Jironal, admitting he’d seen you but excusing himself from arresting you. He protested that the arrest order was clearly a misapprehension. That you had acted under the Royesse Iselle’s orders, and had done great good for Chalion, and no treason; that the marriage was immensely popular with the people of Taryoon. And that everyone thinks the royesse is extremely beautiful, too. That the new Heiress was seen by everyone as wise and good, and a great relief and hope after the disasters of Orico’s reign.”

Dy Baocia snorted. “Which, as they are concomitantly the disasters of dy Jironal’s reign, works out to an unintended insult. Or was it unintended?”

“I rather think so. The man is, um, plain-minded and plainspoken. He says he meant it to help persuade dy Jironal to turn to the royesse’s support.”

“It’s more likely to effect the opposite,” said Cazaril slowly. “It would persuade dy Jironal that his own support is failing rapidly and that he had better take action at once to shore it up. When would dy Jironal have received this sage advice from his subordinate?”

Palli’s lips twisted. “Early yesterday morning.”

“Well . . . there’s nothing in it that he would not have received from other sources by then, I suppose.” Cazaril passed the order over to Bergon, waiting with keen interest.

“So, dy Jironal’s out of Cardegoss,” said Iselle thoughtfully.

“Yes, but gone where?” asked Palli.

Dy Baocia pulled his lip. “If he left with so few men, it has to be to somewhere that his forces are mustered. Somewhere within striking distance of Taryoon. That means either to his son-in-law the provincar of Thistan, to our east, or to Valenda, to our northwest.”

“Thistan is actually closer to us,” said Cazaril.

“But in Valenda, he holds my mother and sister hostage,” said dy Baocia grimly.

“No more now than before,” said Iselle, her voice stiff with suppressed worry. “They bade me go, Uncle . . .”

Bergon was listening with close attention. The Ibran royse had grown up with civil war, Cazaril was reminded; he might be disturbed, but he showed no signs of panic.

“I think we should ride straight for Cardegoss while dy Jironal is out of it, and take possession,” said Iselle.

“If we are to mount such a foray,” her uncle demurred, “we should take Valenda first, free our family, and secure our base. But if dy Jironal is mustering men to attack Taryoon, I do not wish to strip it of defenses.”

Iselle gestured urgently. “But if Bergon and I are out of Taryoon, dy Jironal will have no reason to attack it. Nor Valenda either. It’s me he wants—must have.”

“The vision of dy Jironal ambushing your column on the road, where you are out in the open and vulnerable, doesn’t appeal to me much either,” said Cazaril.

“How many men could you spare to escort us to Cardegoss, Uncle?” Iselle asked. “Mounted. The foot soldiers to follow at their best speed. And how soon could they be mustered?”

“I could have five hundred of horse by tomorrow night, and a thousand of foot the day after,” dy Baocia admitted rather reluctantly. “My two good neighbors could send as many, but not as soon.”

Dy Baocia could pull out double that number from his hat, Cazaril thought, if he weren’t hedging. Too great a care could be as fatal as too great a carelessness when the moment came to hazard all.

Iselle folded her hands in her lap and frowned fiercely. “Then have them make ready. We will keep the predawn vigil of prayers for the Daughter’s Day and attend the procession as we had planned. Uncle, Lord dy Palliar, if it please you send out what men you can find to ride in all directions for news of dy Jironal’s movements. And then we’ll see what new information we have by tomorrow night, and take a final decision then.”

The two men bowed, and hurried out; Iselle bade Cazaril stay a moment.

“I did not wish to argue with my uncle,” she said to him in a tone of doubt, “but I think Valenda is a distraction. What do you think, Cazaril?”

“From the point of view of the roya and royina of Chalion-Ibra . . . it does not command a position of geographic importance. Whoever may hold it.”

“Then let it be a sink for dy Jironal’s forces instead of our own. But I suspect my uncle will be difficult about it.”

Bergon cleared his throat. “The road to Valenda and the road to Cardegoss run together for the first stage. We could put it about that we were making for Valenda, but then strike for Cardegoss instead at the fork.”

“Put it about to who?”

“Everyone. Pretty nearly. Then whatever spies dy Jironal has among us will send him haring off in the wrong direction.”

Yes, actually, this was the son of the Fox of Ibra . . . Cazaril’s brows twitched up in approval.

Iselle thought it over, then frowned. “It works only if my uncle’s men will follow us.”

“If we lead, they’ll have no choice but to follow us, I think.”

“My hope is to avoid a war, not start one,” said Iselle.

“Then not marching up to a town full of the chancellor’s forces makes sense, don’t you think?” said Bergon.

Iselle smiled mistily, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek; he touched the spot in mild wonder. “We shall both take thought until tomorrow,” she announced. “Cazaril, start that letter toward my brother Orico all the same, as if we meant to sit tight here in Taryoon. Perchance we shall overtake it on the road and deliver it ourselves.”

WITH DY BAOCIA’S AND THE ARCHDIVINE’S GUIDANCE, Cazaril found no lack of eager volunteers in town or temple to take the royesse’s letter to Cardegoss. Men seemed to be flocking to the royal couple’s side. Those who’d missed the wedding itself were now pouring into town for the Daughter’s Day celebration tomorrow. All that youth and beauty acted as a powerful talisman upon men’s hearts; the Lady of Spring’s season of renewal was being strongly identified with Iselle’s impending reign. The trick would be to get the governance of Chalion on a more even footing while the mood held, so that it might still stand strong in less happy hours. Surely no witness here in Taryoon would ever quite forget this time of hope; it would still linger in their eyes when they looked at an older Iselle and Bergon.

Thus Cazaril oversaw a party of a dozen grave men climb into their saddles at a time of night when most men were climbing into their beds. He gave the official documents into the hands of a senior divine, a sober lord who had risen high in the Order of the Father. The March dy Sould rode with them, as Bergon’s witness and spokesman. The earnest ambassadors clattered out of the temple plaza, and Palli walked Cazaril back to dy Baocia’s palace and wished him good night.

The little distracting flurry of action fading in his mind, Cazaril’s steps grew heavy again as he climbed the stairs of his courtyard gallery. The weight of the curse was a secret burden dragging down all bright hopes. A younger Orico had started out his reign just as eager and willing as Iselle, a dozen years ago. As if he’d believed then that if only he applied enough effort, goodwill, steady virtue, he could overcome the black blight. But it had all gone wrong. . . .

There were worse fates than becoming Iselle’s dy Lutez, Cazaril reflected. He might become Iselle’s dy Jironal. How much frustration, how much corrosion could a loyal man endure before going mad, watching such a long slow drain of youth and hope into age and despair? And yet, whatever Orico had been, he had held on long enough for the next generation to gain its chance. Like some doomed little hero holding back a dike of woe, and drowning while the others escaped the tide.

Cazaril readied himself for bed, and his nightly attack, but Dondo was surprisingly quiescent. Exhausted? Recouping his forces? Waiting . . . Despite that malevolent presence and promise, Cazaril slept at last.

* * *

A SERVANT WOKE HIM AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN AND led him by candlelight down into the courtyard, where the royal couple’s inner household was to have its holy vigil. The air was chill and foggy, but a few faint stars directly overhead promised a fair dawning soon. Ibran-style prayer mats had been arranged around the central fountain, and each person took their station upon them, on knees or prone as they were so moved; Iselle and Bergon knelt side by side. Lady Betriz placed herself between the royesse and Cazaril. Dy Tagille and dy Cembuer, yawning, hurried in to join them on the outer ring of rugs, with some half a dozen other persons of lesser rank. A divine from the temple led a short prayer aloud, then invited all to meditate upon the blessings of the turning season. All over Taryoon, winter’s fires were being extinguished. When all was in readiness, the last candles were blown out. A profound darkness and silence descended.

Quietly, Cazaril laid himself prone upon his rug, arms outstretched. He told over the couple of spring prayers he knew three times each, but then gave up trying to fill his mind with rote words to keep his thoughts out. If he let his thoughts run their course, perhaps some silence would follow. And in it he might hear . . . what?

He changed the subject, Betriz had charged, when the answers were too difficult for him. He’d tried to do so to the gods. He hadn’t fooled them either, apparently.

Ista had been given her chance to lift the curse, and failed; and had failed, it seemed, for her generation. If he failed, he suspected he would not be allowed to go around to try again. So would Iselle or Bergon or both get to be the new Orico, holding back the tide until they foundered, to create the next chance?

They will be vastly unlucky in their children. He knew it, suddenly, with a cold clarity. The whole of their scheme for peace and order rode upon the hope of a strong, bright heir to follow them both. They would pour themselves until empty into children miscarried, dead, mad, exiled, betrayed . . .

I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.

He knew where it was. It was on the other side of every living person, every living creature, as close as the other side of a coin, the other side of a door. Every soul was a potential portal to the gods. I wonder what would happen if we all opened up at once? Would it flood the world with miracle, drain heaven? He had a sudden vision of saints as the gods’ irrigation system, like the one around Zagosur; a rational and careful opening and closing of sluice gates to deliver each little soul-farm its just portion of benison. Except that this felt more like floodwaters backed up behind a cracking dam.

Ghosts were exiles upon the wrong border, people turned inside out. Why didn’t it work the other way around? What would it be like to be an anti-ghost of flesh let loose in a world of spirit? Would one be frustratingly invisible to most spirits, impotent there, as ghosts were invisible to most men?

And if I can see ghosts sundered from their bodies, why I can’t see them when they’re still in their bodies? Had he ever tried? How many people were ranged around him right now? He closed his eyes and tried to see them in the dark with his inner sight. His senses were still confused by matter; somewhere in the outer rank of prayer rugs, someone started to snore, and was nudged awake with a startled grunt by a snickering companion. If only it worked that way, it would be like seeing through a window into heaven.

If the gods saw people’s souls but not their bodies, in mirror to the way people saw bodies but not souls, it might explain why the gods were so careless of such things as appearance, or other bodily functions. Such as pain? Was pain an illusion, from the gods’ point of view? Perhaps heaven was not a place, but merely an angle of view, a vantage, a perspective.

And at the moment of death, we slide through altogether. Losing our anchor in matter, gaining . . . what? Death ripped a hole between the worlds.

And if one death ripped a little hole in the world, quickly healed, what would it take to rip a bigger hole? Not a mere postern gate to slip out of, but a wide breach, mined and sapped, one that holy armies might pour in through?

If a god died, what kind of hole would it rip between earth and heaven? What was the Golden General’s blessing-curse anyway, this exiled thing from the other side? What kind of portal had the Roknari genius opened for himself, what kind of channel had he been . . . ?

Cazaril’s swollen belly cramped, and he rolled a little sideways to give it ease. I am a most peculiar locus at present. Two exiles from the world of spirit were trapped inside his flesh. The demon, which did not belong here at all, and Dondo, who should have left but was anchored by his unrelinquished sins. Dondo did not desire the gods. Dondo was a clot of self-will, a leaden plug, digging into his body with claws like grappling hooks. If not for Dondo, he could run away.

Could I?

He imagined it . . . suppose this lethal anchor were suddenly and—ha—miraculously removed. He could run away . . . but then he’d never know how it might have worked out. That Cazaril. If only he’d hung on another day, another mile, he might have saved the world. But he quit just an hour too soon . . . Now, there was a damnation to make the sundered ghosts seem a faint quaint amusement. A lifetime—an eternity?—of second-guessing himself.

But the only way ever to know for certain was to ride it out all the way to his destruction.

Five gods, I am surely mad. I believe I would limp all the way to the Bastard’s hell for that frightful curiosity’s sake.

Around him, he could hear the others breathing, the occasional little rustle of fabric. The fountain burbled gently. The sounds comforted him. He felt very alone, but at least it was in good company.

Welcome to sainthood, Cazaril. By the gods’ blessings, you get to host miracles! The catch is, you don’t get to choose what they are. . . .

Betriz had it exactly backward. It wasn’t a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you. Could an old siege-master learn to surrender, to open his gates?

Into your hands, O lords of light, I commend my soul. Do what you must to mend the world. I am at your service.

The sky was brightening, turning from Father Winter’s gray to the Daughter’s own fine blue. In the shadowed court, Cazaril could see the shapes of his companions begin to shade and fill with the light’s gift of color. The scent of the orange blossoms hung heavily in the dawn damp, and more faintly, the perfume of Betriz’s hair. Cazaril pushed back up onto his knees, stiff and cold.

From somewhere in the palace, a man’s bellow split the air, and was abruptly cut off. A woman shrieked.

Cazaril put a hand to the pavement, shoving himself to his feet, and pushed back his vest-cloak from his sword hilt. All around him, the others were rising and looking about in alarm.

“Dy Tagille.” Bergon motioned to his Ibran companion. “Go see.”

Dy Tagille nodded and departed at a run.

Dy Cembuer, his right arm still in a sling, clenched and unclenched his left hand, awkwardly freed his sword hilt, and began striding after him. “We should bar the gate.”

Cazaril glanced around the courtyard, and at the tiled archway. Its decorative wrought-iron gate swung wide after dy Tagille. Was there another entrance? “Royesse, Royse, Betriz, you must not get trapped in here.” He ran after dy Cembuer, his heart already pounding. If he could get them out before the—

A frantic page pelted through as dy Cembuer reached the archway. “My lords, help, armed men have broken into the palace!” He looked wildly over his shoulder.

And here they are. Two men, swords out, ran in the page’s track. Dy Cembuer, trying to push the gate shut with his sword in his left hand, barely ducked the first blow. Then Cazaril was upon them. His first swing was wild, and his target parried it with a clang that echoed around the court.

“Get out!” he screamed over his shoulder. “Over the roofs if you have to!” Could Iselle climb in her court dress? He could not look to see if he was obeyed, for his opponent recovered and bore in hard. The bravos, soldiers, whatever they were, wore ordinary street clothes, no identifying colors or badges—the better to infiltrate the city in little groups, mixed in with the festival crowd, no doubt.

Dy Cembuer slashed his man. A heavy return blow landed on his broken arm, and he whitened and fell back with a muffled cry. Another soldier appeared around the corner and ran toward the archway, wearing the Baocian colors of green and black, and for a moment Cazaril’s heart lifted in hope. Until he recognized him as Teidez’s suborned guard captain—growing ever more expert in betrayal, apparently.

The Baocian captain’s lips drew back as he saw Cazaril, and he gripped his sword grimly, moving in beside his comrade. Cazaril had neither breathing space nor a hand free to try to close the gate on them again, and besides, dy Cembuer’s opponent had fallen in the path. Cazaril did not dare fall back. This narrow choke point forced them to come at him one at a time, the best odds he was likely to get today. His hand was growing numb from the ringing blows transmitted up his blade into his hilt, and his gut was cramping. But his every gasping breath bought another stride of running time for Bergon and Iselle and Betriz. One step, two steps, five steps . . . Where was dy Tagille? Nine steps, eleven, fifteen . . . How many men were coming up after these? His blade hacked a piece out of his first attacker’s jaw, and the man reeled back with a bloody cry, but it only left the guard captain with a better angle for attack. The man still wore Dondo’s green ring. It flashed as his sword darted and parried. Forty steps. Fifty . . .

Cazaril fought in an exaltation of terror, so hard-pressed to defend himself that the supernatural dangers of a successful thrust of his own, of the death demon tearing his soul out of his body along with his dying victim’s, scarcely seemed to apply. Cazaril’s world narrowed; he no longer sought to win the day, or this fight, or his life, but merely another stride. Each stride a little victory. Sixty . . . something . . . he was losing count. Begin again. One. Two. Three . . .

I am probably going to die now. Twice was no charm. He howled inside with the waste of it, mad with regret that he could not die enough. His arm was shaking with fatigue. This gate wanted a swordsman, not a secretary, but the royesse’s private holy vigil had included only the few nobles. Was no one coming up behind him in support? Surely even the old servants could grab something and throw it . . . Twenty-two . . .

Could he fall back across the courtyard to the stairs? Was the royal party gone up the stairs yet? He threw a frantic glance backward, a mistake, for he lost his rhythm; with a scree of metal, the captain’s sword snaked his from his tingling grip. His blade clattered across the stone, spinning. The Baocian bore Cazaril violently backward through the archway and knocked him to the pavement. Half a dozen attackers surged through the gate after the captain and spread out across the courtyard; a couple of them, prudent and experienced, kicked him in passing to keep him down. He still didn’t know who they were, but he had no doubt whose they were.

Coughing, he rolled on his side in time to see dy Jironal, swearing, stride through the gate in the wake of another half dozen men. Dy Cembuer was still down, bent in on himself, teeth clenched in agony. Were Iselle and Bergon safe away? Down a servants’ stair, over the roof tiles? Pray the gods they had not panicked and barricaded themselves in their chambers . . . Dy Jironal headed toward the stairs to the gallery, where a little knot of his men waited to make a concerted rush.

“Martou!” Cazaril bellowed, wrenching over and up onto his knees.

Dy Jironal swung round as though spun on the end of a rope. “You!” At his motion, the Baocian guard captain and another soldier grasped Cazaril by the arms, bending them up behind him, and dragged him to his feet.

“You are too late!” Cazaril called. “She’s wed and bedded, and there’s no way you can undo it now. Chalion owns Ibra at the fairest price ever paid, and all the country celebrates its good fortune. She is the Child of Spring and the delight of the gods. You can’t win against her. Give over! Save your life, and the lives of your men.”

“Wed?” snarled dy Jironal. “Widowed, if needs be. She is a mad traitor and the whore of Ibra and accursed, and I’ll not have it!” He whirled again toward the stairs.

“You’re the whore, Martou! You sold Gotorget for Roknari money that I refused, and you sold me to the galleys to stop my mouth!” Cazaril glared around frantically at the hesitating troop. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven . . . “This liar sells his own men. Follow him, and you risk betrayal the first moment he smells profit!”

Dy Jironal turned again, drawing his sword. “I’ll stop your mouth, you miserable fool! Hold him up.”

Wait, no—

The two men holding Cazaril jerked a little apart, their eyes widening, as dy Jironal began to stride forward, twisting for a mighty two-handed swing. “My lord, it’s murder,” faltered the man holding Cazaril’s left arm. The beheading arc was blocked by Cazaril’s captors, and dy Jironal changed in mid-career to a violent low thrust, lunging forward with all the weight of his fury behind his arm.

The steel pierced silk brocade and skin and muscle and drove through Cazaril’s gut, and Cazaril was nearly jerked off his feet with the force of it.

Sound ceased. The sword was sliding through him as slowly as a pearl dropped in honey, and as painlessly. Dy Jironal’s red face was frozen in a rictus of rage. On either side of Cazaril, his captors bent and leaned away, mouths creeping open on startled cries that never emerged.

With a yowl of triumph that only Cazaril heard, the death demon coursed up the sword blade, leaving it red-hot in its wake, and into dy Jironal’s hand. With a scream of anguish, a black syrup that was Dondo poured after. Crackling blue-white sparks grew around dy Jironal’s sword arm like ivy twining, and then spiraled around his whole body. Slowly, dy Jironal’s head tilted back, and white fire came from his mouth as his soul was uprooted from him. His hair stood on end, and his eyes widened and boiled white. The driven sword still moved with his falling weight, and Cazaril’s flesh sizzled around it. White and black and red whirled together, braided round each other, and flowed away in no direction. Cazaril’s perception was drawn into the twisting cyclone’s wake, up out of his body like a rising column of smoke. Three deaths and a demon all bound together. They flowed into a blue Presence . . .

Cazaril’s mind exploded.

He opened outward, and outward, and outward still, till all the world lay below him as if seen from a high mountain. But not the realm of matter. This was a landscape of soul-stuff; colors he could not name, of a shattering brilliance, bore him up upon a glorious turbulence. He could hear all the minds of the world whispering, a sighing like wind in a forest—if one could but distinguish, simultaneously and separately, the song of each leaf. And all the world’s cries of pain and woe. And shame and joy. And hope and despair and aspiration . . . A thousand thousand moments from a thousand thousand lives poured through his distending spirit.

From the surface below him, little bubbles of soul-color were boiling up one by one and floating into a turning dance, hundreds, thousands, like great raindrops falling upward . . . It is the dying, pouring in through the rents of the worlds into this place. Souls gestated by matter in the world, dying into this strange new birth. Too much, too much, too much . . . His mind could not hold it all, and the visions burst from him like water falling through his fingers.

He’d once thought of the Lady of Spring as a sort of pleasant, gentle young woman, in his vague and youthful conceptualizations. The divines and Ordol had honed it scarcely further than to a mental picture of a nice immortal lady. This overwhelming Mind listened to every cry or song in the world at once. She watched the souls spiral up in all their terrible complex beauty with the delight of a gardener inhaling the scent of Her flowers. And now this Mind turned Her attention fully upon Cazaril.

Cazaril melted, and was cupped in Her hands. He thought She drank him, siphoning him out of the violent concatenation of the dy Jironal brothers and the demon, who shot away elsewhere. He was blown from Her lips again, back down in a tightening spiral through the great slash in the world that was his death, and once again into his body. Dy Jironal’s sword blade was just emerging from his back. Blood bloomed around the metal point like a rose.

And now to work, the Lady whispered. Open to me, sweet Cazaril.

Can I watch? he asked tremulously.

Whatever you can bear, is permitted.

He sank back in a languid ease, as the goddess flowed through him into the world. His lips curved up in a smile, or started to; his fleshly body was as sluggish as those of the men around him in the courtyard. He seemed to be sinking to his knees. Dy Jironal’s corpse had not yet finished falling to the pavement, although his dead hand had spasmed from his sword hilt. Dy Cembuer was lifting himself upon his good arm, his mouth opening upon a cry that was going to eventually become, Cazaril! Some men were throwing themselves prone. Some were starting to run.

The goddess drew the curse of Chalion like thick black wool into Her hands. Lifting it from Iselle and Bergon, somewhere in the streets of Taryoon. From Ista in Valenda. From Sara in Cardegoss. From all the land of Chalion, mountain to mountain, river to plain. Cazaril could not sense Orico in the dark fog. The Lady spun it out again through Cazaril. As it twisted through him into the other realm, its darkness fell away, and then he wasn’t sure if it was a thread or a stream of bright clean water, or wine, or something even more wonderful.

Another Presence, solemn and gray, waited there, and took it up. And took it in. And sighed in something like relief, or completion, or balance. I think it was the blood of a god. Spilled, soiled, drawn up again, cleaned, and returned at last . . .

I don’t understand. Was Ista mistaken? Did I miscount my deaths?

The goddess laughed. Think it through . . .

Then the vast blue Presence poured out of the world through him like a river thundering over a waterfall. The beauty of a triumphal music he knew he would never quite remember, till he came to Her realm again, cracked his heart. The great rent drew closed. Healed. Sealed.

And, abruptly as that, it all was gone.

THE CRACK OF THE STONE PAVEMENT HITTING HIS knees was his first returning sensation. Desperately, he held himself upright, sitting on his heels, so as not to wrench the sword blade around in his flesh. The hilt and a handspan of bright blade hung below his downward-turning gaze, driven at a crooked upward angle into his stomach just below and to the left of his navel. The point seemed to come out somewhere to the right of his spine, and higher. Now came the pain. As he drew his first shuddering breath, the weapon bobbed a trifle. The stink of cauterized flesh assailed his nostrils, mixed with a celestial perfume like spring flowers. He trembled with shock and cold. He tried to hold very still.

He had a distressing urge to giggle. That would hurt. More . . .

Not all the scorched-meat smell was from him. Dy Jironal lay before him. Cazaril had seen corpses burned from the outside in—never before from the inside out. The chancellor’s hair and clothes smoked a little, but then went out without catching to flame.

Cazaril’s attention was arrested by a pebble that lay on the pavement near his knee. It was so dense. So persistent. The gods could not lift so much as a feather, but he, a mere human, might pick up this ancient unchanging object and place it wherever he wished, even into his pocket. He wondered why he had never appreciated the stubborn fidelity of matter. A dried leaf lay nearby, even more stunning in its complexity. Matter invented so many forms, and then went on to generate beauty beyond itself, minds and souls rising up out of it like melody from an instrument . . . matter was an amazement to the gods. Matter remembered itself so very clearly. He could not think why he had failed to notice it before. His own shaking hand was a miracle, as was the fine metal sword in his belly, and the orange trees in the tubs—one was tipped over now, wonderfully fractured and spilling—and the tubs, and the birdsong starting in the morning, and the water—water! Five gods, water!—in the fountain, and the morning light filtering into the sky . . .

“Lord Cazaril?” came a faint voice from his elbow.

He glanced aside to find that dy Cembuer had crept up to him.

“What was that?” Dy Cembuer sounded very close to tears.

“Some miracles.” Too many in one place at one time. He was overwhelmed with miracles. They filled his eyes in every direction.

Speaking was a mistake, for the vibration stirred the pain in his gut. Though he could speak; the sword did not appear to have pierced his lung. He imagined how much it would hurt to cough blood, just now. Gut wound, then. I will be dead again in three days. He could smell a faint scent of shit, mixed with the scorched meat and the goddess’s perfume. And sobbing . . . no, wait, the deadly fecal smell was not coming from him, yet. The Baocian captain was curled up in a tight ball on his side a little way off, his arms locked around his head, weeping. He did not seem to have any wound. Ah. Yes. He had been the nearest living witness. The goddess must have brushed against him, in Her passage.

Cazaril risked another breath. “What did you see?” he asked dy Cembuer.

“That man—was that dy Jironal?”

Cazaril nodded, a tiny careful nod.

“When he stabbed you, there was a hellish crack, and he burst into blue fire. He is . . . what did . . . did the gods strike him down?”

“Not exactly. It was . . . a little more complicated than that . . .” It seemed strangely quiet in the courtyard. Cazaril risked turning his head. About half of the bravos, and a few servants of Iselle’s household, were laid flat on the ground. Some were mumbling rapidly under their breaths; others were crying like the Baocian captain. The rest had vanished.

Cazaril thought he could see now why a man had to lay down his life three times to do this. And here he’d imagined the gods were being arbitrary and difficult for the sake of some arcane punishment. He’d needed the first two deaths just for the practice. The first, to learn how to accept death in the body—his flogging on the galley, that had been. He had not miscounted—that death had not been for the House of Chalion at the time. But it had become so, with Iselle’s marriage to Bergon and its consummation; the joining of two into one, that had shared the curse so horrifyingly between them, had apparently also portioned out this sacrifice. Bergon’s secret dowry, eh. Cazaril hoped he might live long enough to tell him, and that the royse would be pleased. His second acceptance, of death of the soul, had been in the lonely company of crows in Fonsa’s tower. So that when he came at last to this one, he could offer the goddess a smooth and steady partnering . . . humbling parallels involving the training of mules offered themselves to his mind.

Footsteps sounded. Cazaril glanced up to see dy Tagille, winded and disheveled but with his sword sheathed, running into the courtyard. He dashed up to them and stopped abruptly. “Bastard’s hell.” He glanced aside at his Ibran comrade. “Are you all right, dy Cembuer?”

“Sons of bitches broke my arm again. He’s the scary one. What’s happening out there?”

“Dy Baocia rallied his men, and has driven the invaders out of the palace. It’s all very confused right now, but the rest of them seem to be running through town trying to get to the temple.”

“To assail it?” dy Cembuer asked in alarm. He tried to struggle to his feet again.

“No. To surrender to armed men who will not try to tear them limb from limb. It seems every citizen of Taryoon has taken to the streets after them. The women are the worst. Bastard’s hell,” he repeated, staring at dy Jironal’s smoking corpse, “some Chalionese soldier was screaming and babbling that he’d seen dy Jironal struck by lightning from a clear blue sky for the sacrilege of offering battle on the Daughter’s Day. And I scarcely believed him.”

“I saw it, too,” said dy Cembuer. “There was a horrible noise. He didn’t even have time to cry out.”

Dy Tagille dragged the corpse a little way off and knelt in front of Cazaril, staring fearfully at his skewered stomach and then into his face. “Lord Cazaril, we must try to draw this sword from you. Best we do it at once.”

“No . . . wait . . .” Cazaril had once seen a man plugged with a crossbow bolt live for half an hour, until the bolt was drawn out; his blood had gushed forth then, and he’d died. “I want to see Lady Betriz first.”

“My lord, you cannot sit there with a sword stuck through you!”

“Well,” said Cazaril reasonably, “I surely cannot move . . .” Trying to talk made him pant. Not good. He was shivering and very cold. But the throbbing pain was not as devastating as he’d expected, probably because he’d managed to hold so still. As long as he held very still, it wasn’t much worse than Dondo’s clawings.

Other men arrived in the courtyard. Babble and noise and cries from the wounded washed between the walls, and tales repeated over and over in rising voices. Cazaril ignored it all, taken up with his pebble again. He wondered where it had come from, how it had arrived there. What it had been before it was a pebble. A rock? A mountain? Where? For how many years? It filled his mind. And if a pebble could fill his mind, what might a mountain do? The gods held mountains in their minds, and all else besides, all at once. Everything, with the same attention he gave to one thing. He had seen that, through the Lady’s eyes. If it had endured for longer than that infinitesimal blink, he thought his soul would have burst. As it was he felt strangely stretched. Had that glimpse been a gift, or just a careless chance?

“Cazaril?”

A trembling voice, the voice he had been waiting for. He looked up. If the pebble was amazing, Betriz’s face was astounding. The structure of her nose alone could have held him entranced for hours. He abandoned the pebble at once for this better entertainment. But water welled up, shimmering, in her brown eyes, and her face was drained of color. That wasn’t right. Worst of all, her dimples had gone into hiding.

“There you are,” he said happily. His voice was a muzzy croak. “Kiss me now.”

She gulped, knelt, shuffled up to him on her knees, and stretched her neck. Her lips were warm. The perfume of her mouth was nothing at all like a goddess’s, but like a human woman’s, and very good withal. His lips were cold, and he pressed them to hers as much to borrow her heat and youth as anything. So. He’d been swimming in miracle every day of his life, and hadn’t even known it.

He eased his head back. “All right.” He did not add, That’s enough, because it wasn’t. “You can draw the sword out now.”

Men moved around him, mostly worried-looking strangers. Betriz rubbed her face, undid the frogs of his tunic, and stood and hovered. Someone gripped his shoulders. A page proffered a folded pad to clap to his wound, and someone else held lengths of bandages ready to wrap his torso.

Cazaril squinted in uncertainty. Betriz was here: therefore, Iselle must be, must be . . . “Iselle? Bergon?”

“I’m here, Lord Caz.” Iselle’s voice came off to his side.

She moved around in front of him, staring at him in extreme dismay. She had shed her heavily embroidered outer robes in her flight, and still seemed a trifle breathless. She had also shed the black cloak of the curse . . . had she not? Yes, he decided. His inner vision was darkening, but he did not mistake this.

“Bergon is with my uncle,” she continued, “helping to clear dy Jironal’s remaining men from the area.” Her voice was firm in its disregard of the tears running down her face.

“The black shadow is lifted,” he told her, “from you and Bergon. From everyone.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you all about it, if I live.”

“Cazaril!”

He grinned briefly at the familiar, exasperated cadences around his name.

“You live, then!” Her voice wavered. “I—I command you!”

Dy Tagille knelt in front of Cazaril.

Cazaril gave him a short nod. “Draw it.”

“Very straight and smoothly, Lord dy Tagille,” Iselle instructed tensely, “so as not to cut him any worse.”

“Aye, my lady.” Dy Tagille licked his lips in apprehension and grasped the sword’s hilt.

“Carefully,” gasped Cazaril, “but not quite so slowly, please . . .”

The blade left him; a warm gush of liquid spurted from the mouth of his wound after it. Cazaril had hoped to pass out, but he only swayed as pads were clapped to him and held hard fore and aft. He stared down expecting to see his lap awash in blood, but no flood of red met his sight; it was a clear liquid, merely tinged with pink. Sword must have lanced my tumor. Which was not, it appeared, and the Bastard fry Rojeras for inflicting that nightmare upon him, stuffed with some grotesque demon fetus after all. He tried not to think, At least not anymore. A murmur of astonishment passed among the ring of watchers as the scent of celestial flowers from this exudation filled the air.

He let himself fall, boneless and unresisting, into his eager helpers’ arms. He did manage to surreptitiously scoop up his pebble before the willing hands bore him off up the stairs to his bedchamber. They were excited and frightened, but he was growing delightfully relaxed. It seemed he was to be fussed over, lovely. When Betriz held his hand, as he was eased into his bed, he gripped hers and did not let go.

A tapping and low voices at his chamber door drew Cazaril from his doze. The room was dim. A single candle flame pushing back a deep dark told him night was fallen. He heard the physician, who had been sitting with him, murmuring, “He is sleeping, Roy—Royina . . .”

“No, I’m not,” Cazaril called eagerly. “Come in.” He tensed his arms to push himself upright, then thought better of it. He added, “Make more light. A deal more light. I want to see you.”

A great party of persons shuffled into his chamber, attempting to make themselves quiet and gentle, like a parade gone suddenly shy. Iselle and Bergon, with Betriz and Palli attendant upon them; the archdivine of Taryoon, with the little judge of the Father staring around in his wake. They quite filled the room. Cazaril smiled up amiably at them from his horizontal paradise of clean linens and stillness as candle was held to candle and the flames multiplied.

Bergon looked down at him in apprehension and whispered hoarsely to the physician, “How is he?”

“He passed a deal of blood in his water earlier, but less tonight. He has no fever yet. I daren’t let him have more than a few sips of tea, till we know how his gut wound progresses. I don’t know how much pain he bears.”

Cazaril decided he preferred to speak for himself. “I hurt, no doubt of that.” He made another feeble attempt to roll up, and winced. “I would sit up a little. I cannot talk looking up all your noses like this.” Palli and Bergon rushed to help gently raise him, plumping pillows behind him.

“Thank you,” said Iselle to the physician, who bowed and, taking the royal hint, stepped out of the way.

Cazaril eased back with a sigh, and said, “What has transpired? Is Taryoon under attack? And don’t talk in those funereal whispers, either.”

Iselle smiled from the foot of his bed. “Much has happened,” she told him, her voice reverting to its normal firm timbre. “Dy Jironal had men advancing as fast as they could march from both his son-in-law in Thistan and from Valenda, to follow up in support of his spies and abductors got in at the festival. Late last night the column coming down the road from Valenda met the delegation carrying our letter to Orico in Cardegoss, and captured them.”

“Alive, yes?” said Cazaril in alarm.

“There was some scuffle, but none killed, thank the gods. Much debate followed in their camp.”

Well, he had sent the most sensible, persuasive men of weight and worth that Taryoon could muster for that embassy.

“Later in the afternoon, we sent out parties of parley. We included some of dy Jironal’s men who had witnessed the fight in the courtyard, and . . . and whatever that miraculous blue fire was that killed him, to explain and to testify. They cried and gibbered a lot, but they were very convincing. Cazaril, what really—oh, and they say Orico is dead.”

Cazaril sighed. I knew that. “When?”

The archdivine of Taryoon replied, “There’s some confusion about that. A Temple courier rode through to us this afternoon with the news. She bore me a letter from Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss saying it was the night after the royesse’s—the royina’s wedding. But dy Jironal’s men all say he told them Orico had died the night before it, and so he was now rightful regent of Chalion. I suppose he was lying. I’m not sure it matters, now.”

But it might have mattered, had events taken a different path . . . Cazaril frowned in curious speculation.

“In any case,” put in Bergon, “between the news of dy Jironal’s startling taking-off, and the failure and capture of their infiltrators, and the realization that they marched not against a rebellious Heiress, but their rightful royina, the columns have broken up. The men are returning to their homes. I’m just back from overseeing that.” Indeed, he was mud-splashed, bright-eyed with the exuberance of success—and relief.

“Do you think the truce will hold?” asked Cazaril. “Dy Jironal held the strings of a very considerable network of power and relations, all of whom still have their interests at risk.”

Palli grunted, and shook his head. “They have not the backing of forces from the Order of the Son, now it’s headless—worse, they’ve the near certainty that control of the order will pass out of their faction now. I think the Jironal clan will learn caution.”

“The provincar of Thistan has already sent us a letter of submission,” put in Iselle, “just arrived. It looks to have been hastily penned. We plan to wait one more day to be sure the roads are clear, and to give thanks to the gods in the temple of Taryoon. Then Bergon and I will ride for Cardegoss with a contingent of my uncle’s cavalry, for Orico’s funeral and my coronation.” Her mouth turned down. “I fear we will have to leave you here for a time, Lord Caz.”

He glanced at Betriz, watching him, her eyes dark with concern. Where Iselle rode, Betriz, her first courtier, must needs follow.

Iselle went on, “Don’t speak if it pains you too much, but Cazaril . . . what happened in the courtyard? Did the Daughter truly strike dy Jironal dead with a bolt of lightning?”

“His body looked it, I must say,” said Bergon. “All cooked. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“That is a good story,” said Cazaril slowly, “and will do for most men. You here should know the truth, but . . . I think this truth should go no further, eh?”

Iselle quietly bade the physician excuse himself. She glanced curiously at the little judge. “And this gentleman, Cazaril?”

“The Honorable Paginine is . . . is in the way of being a colleague of mine. He should stay, and the archdivine as well.”

Cazaril found his audience ranged around his bed, staring at him rather breathlessly. Neither Paginine nor the archdivine, nor Palli, knew the preamble about Dondo and the death demon, Cazaril realized, and so he found himself compelled to revert to that beginning, though in as few words as he could make come out sensibly. At least he hoped it sounded coherent, and not like the ravings of a madman.

“Archdivine Mendenal in Cardegoss knows all this tale,” he assured the shocked-looking pair from Taryoon. Palli’s mouth was twisted in something between astonishment and indignation; Cazaril evaded his eye a trifle guiltily. “But when dy Jironal bade his men hold me unarmed, and ran me through—when he murdered me, the death demon bore us all off in an unbalanced confusion of killers and victims. That is, the demon bore the pair of them, but somehow my soul was attached, and followed . . . what I saw then . . . the goddess . . .” his voice faltered. “I don’t know how to open my mouth and push out the universe in words. It won’t fit. If I had all the words in all the languages in the world that ever were or will be, and spoke till the end of time, it still couldn’t . . .” He was shivering, suddenly, his eyes blurred with tears.

“But you weren’t really dead, were you?” said Palli uneasily.

“Oh, yes. Just for a little while . . . for an odd angle of little that came out, um, very large. If I had not died in truth, I could not have ripped open the wall between the worlds, and the goddess could not have reached in to take back the curse. Which was a drop of the Father’s blood, as nearly as I could tell, though how the Golden General came by such a gift I know not. That’s a metaphor, by the way. I’m sorry. I have not . . . I have not the words for what I saw. Talking about it is like trying to weave a box of shadows in which to carry water.” And our souls are parched. “The Lady of Spring let me look through Her eyes, and though my second sight is taken back—I think—my eyes do not seem to work quite the same as they did . . .”

The archdivine signed himself. Paginine cleared his throat, and said diffidently, “Indeed, my lord, you do not make that great roaring light about you anymore.”

“Do I not? Oh, good.” Cazaril added eagerly, “But the black cloak about Iselle and Bergon, it is gone as well, yes?”

“Yes, my lord. Royse, Royina, if it please you. The shadow seems to be lifted altogether.”

“So all is well. Gods, demons, ghosts, the whole company, all gone. There’s nothing odd left about me now,” said Cazaril happily.

Paginine screwed up his face in an expression that was not quite appalled, not quite a laugh. “I would not go so far as to say that, my lord,” he murmured.

The archdivine nudged Paginine, and whispered, “But he speaks the truth, yes? Wild as it seems . . .”

“Oh, yes, Your Reverence. I have no doubt of that.” The bland stare he traded Cazaril bore rather more understanding than that of the archdivine’s, who was looking astonished and overawed.

“Tomorrow,” Iselle announced, “Bergon and I shall make a thanksgiving procession to the temple, walking barefoot to sign our gratitude to the gods.”

Cazaril said in muzzy worry, “Oh. Oh, do be careful, then. Don’t step on any broken glass or old nails, now.”

“We shall watch out for each other’s steps the whole way,” Bergon promised him.

Cazaril added aside to Betriz, his hand creeping across the coverlet to touch hers, “You know, I am not haunted anymore. Quite a load off my mind, in more ways than one. Very liberating to a man, that sort of thing . . .” His voice was dropping in volume, raspy with fatigue. Her hand turned under his, and gave a secret squeeze.

“We should withdraw and let you rest,” said Iselle, frowning in renewed worry. “Is there anything you desire, Cazaril? Anything at all?”

About to reply No, nothing, he said instead, “Oh. Yes. I want music.”

“Music?”

“Perhaps some very quiet music,” Betriz ventured. “To lull him to sleep.”

Bergon smiled. “If it please you, then, see to it, Lady Betriz.” The mob withdrew, tiptoeing loudly. The physician returned. He let Cazaril drink tea, in trade for making more blood-tinted piss for him to examine suspiciously by candlelight and growl at in an unsettling fashion.

At length, Betriz came back with a nervous-looking young lutenist who appeared to have been wakened out of a sound sleep for this command performance. But he worked his fingers, tuned up, and played seven short pieces. None of them was the right one; none evoked the Lady and Her soul-flowers, till he played an eighth, an interlaced counterpoint of surpassing sweetness. That one had a faint echo of heaven in it. Cazaril had him play it through twice more, and cried a little, upon which Betriz insisted that he was too tired and must sleep now, and bore the young man off again.

And Cazaril still hadn’t had a chance to tell her about her nose. When he tried to explain this miracle to the physician, the man responded by giving him a large spoonful of syrup of poppies, after which they ceased to alarm each other for the rest of the night.

IN THREE DAYS’ TIME HIS WOUNDS STOPPED LEAKING scented fluid, closing cleanly, and the physician permitted Cazaril thin gruel for breakfast. This revived him enough to insist on being allowed out to sit in the spring sun of the courtyard. The expedition seemed to require an inordinate number of servants and helpers, but at last he was guided carefully down the stairs and into a chair lined with wool-padded and feather-stuffed cushions, with his feet propped up on another cushioned chair. He shooed away his helpers and gave himself over to a most delicious idleness. The fountain burbled soothingly. The trees in the tubs unfurled more fragrant flowers. A pair of little orange-and-black birds stitched the air, bringing dry grass and twigs to build a nest tucked up in the carvings on one of the gallery’s supporting posts. An ambitious litter of paper and pens lay forgotten on the small table at Cazaril’s elbow as he watched them flit back and forth.

Dy Baocia’s palace was very quiet, with its royal guests and its lord and lady all gone to Cardegoss. Cazaril therefore smiled with lazy delight when the wrought-iron gate under the end archway swung aside to admit Palli. The march had been assigned by his new royina the dull task of keeping watch over her convalescent secretary while everyone else went off to the grand events in the capital, which seemed to Cazaril rather an unfair reward for Palli’s valiant service. Palli had attended upon him so faithfully, Cazaril felt quite guilty for wishing Iselle might have spared Lady Betriz instead.

Palli, grinning, gave him a mock salute and seated himself on the fountain’s edge. “Well, Castillar! You look better. Very vertical indeed. But what’s this”—he gestured to the table—“work? Before they left yesterday your ladies charged me to enforce a very long list of things you were not to do, most of which you will be glad to know I have forgotten, but I’m sure work was high on it.”

“No such thing,” said Cazaril. “I was going to attempt some poetry after the manner of Behar, but then there were these birds . . . there goes one now.” He paused to mark the orange-and-black flash. “People compliment birds for being great builders, but really, these two seem terribly clumsy. Perhaps they are young birds, and this is their first try. Persistent, though. Although I suppose if I was to attempt to build a hut using only my mouth, I would do no better. I should write a poem in praise of birds. If matter that gets up and walks about, like you, is miraculous, how much more marvelous is matter that gets up and flies!”

Palli’s mouth quirked in bemusement. “Is this poetry or fever, Caz?”

“Oh, it is a great infection of poetry, a contagion of hymns. The gods delight in poets, you know. Songs and poetry, being of the same stuff as souls, can cross into their world almost unimpeded. Stone carvers, now . . . even the gods are in awe of stone carvers.” He squinted in the sun and grinned back at Palli.

“Nevertheless,” murmured Palli dryly, “one feels that your quatrain yesterday morning to Lady Betriz’s nose was a tactical mistake.”

“I was not making fun of her!” Cazaril protested indignantly. “Was she still angry at me when she left?”

“No, no, she wasn’t angry! She was persuaded it was fever, and was very worried withal. If I were you, I’d claim it for fever.”

“I could not write a poem to all of her just yet. I tried. Too overwhelming.”

“Well, if you must scribble paeans to her body parts, pick lips. Lips are more romantic than noses.”

“Why?” asked Cazaril. “Isn’t every part of her an amazement?”

“Yes, but we kiss lips. We don’t kiss noses. Normally. Men write poems to the objects of our desire in order to lure them closer.”

“How practical. In that case, you’d think men would write more poems to ladies’ private parts.”

“The ladies would hit us. Lips are a safe compromise, being as it were a stand-in or stepping-stone to the greater mysteries.”

“Hah. Anyway, I desire all of her. Nose and lips and feet and all the parts between, and her soul, without which her mere body would be all still and cold and claylike, and start to rot, and be not an object of desire at all.”

“Agh!” Palli ran his hand through his hair. “My friend, you do not understand romance.”

“I promise you, I do not understand anything anymore. I am gloriously bewildered.” He lay back in his cushions and laughed softly.

Palli snorted, and bent forward to pick up the paper from the top of the pile, the only one so far with writing on it. He glanced down it, and his brows rose. “What’s this? This isn’t about ladies’ noses.” His face sobered; his gaze traveled back to the top of the page, and down once more. “In fact, I’m not just sure what it’s about. Although it makes the hairs stand up on the backs of my arms . . .”

“Oh, that. It’s nothing, I fear. I was trying—but it wasn’t”—Cazaril’s hands waved helplessly, and came back to touch his brow—“it wasn’t what I saw.” He added in explanation, “I thought in poetry the words might bear more freight, exist on both sides of the wall between the worlds, as people do. So far I’m just creating waste paper, fit only for lighting a fire.”

“Hm,” said Palli. Unobtrusively, he folded up the paper and tucked it inside his vest-cloak.

“I’ll try again,” sighed Cazaril. “Maybe I can get it right someday. I must write some hymns to matter, too. Birds. Stones. That would please the Lady, I think.”

Palli blinked. “To lure Her closer?”

“Might.”

“Dangerous stuff, this poetry. I think I’ll stick to action, myself.”

Cazaril grinned at him. “Watch out, my lord Dedicat. Action can be prayer, too.”

Whispers and muffled giggles sounded from the end of the gallery. Cazaril looked up to see some servant women and boys crouched behind the carved railings, peeking through at him. Palli followed his glance. One girl popped up boldly and waved at them. Amiably, Cazaril waved back. The giggles rose to a crescendo, and the women scurried off. Palli scratched his ear and regarded Cazaril with wry inquiry.

Cazaril explained, “People have been sneaking in all morning to see the spot where poor dy Jironal was struck down. If he’s not careful, Lord dy Baocia will lose his nice new courtyard to a shrine.”

Palli cleared his throat. “Actually, Caz, they’re sneaking in to peek at you. A couple of dy Baocia’s servants are charging admission to conduct the curious in and out of the palace. I was of two minds whether to quash the enterprise, but if they’re bothering you, I will . . .” He shifted, as if to rise.

“Oh. Oh, no, don’t trouble them. I have made a great deal of extra work for the palace servants. Let them profit a bit.”

Palli snorted, but shrugged acquiescence. “And you still have no fever?”

“I wasn’t sure at first, but no. That physician finally let me eat, although not enough. I am healing, I think.”

“That’s a miracle in itself, worth a vaida to see.”

“Yes. I’m not quite sure if putting me back into the world this way was a parting gift of the Lady, or just a chance benefit of Her need to have someone on this side to hold open the gate for Her. Ordol was right about the gods being parsimonious. Well, it’s all right either way. We shall surely meet again someday.” He leaned back, staring into the sky, the Lady’s own blue. His lips curled up, unwilled.

“You were the soberest fellow I ever met, and now you grin all the time. Caz, are you sure She got your soul back in right way round?”

Cazaril laughed out loud. “Maybe not! You know how it is when you travel. You pack all your things in your saddlebags, and by the journey’s end, they seem to have doubled in volume and are hanging out every which way, even though you’d swear you added nothing . . .” He patted his thigh. “Perhaps I am just not packed into this battered old case as neatly as I used to be.”

Palli shook his head in wonder. “And so now you leak poetry. Huh.”

TEN MORE DAYS OF HEALING LEFT CAZARIL NOT AT all bored with resting, if only his ease were not so empty of the people he desired. At last his longing for them overcame his revulsion at the prospect of getting on a horse again, and he set Palli to arranging their journey. Palli’s protests at this premature exercise were perfunctory, easily overborne, as he was no less anxious than Cazaril to see how events in Cardegoss went on.

Cazaril and his escort, including the ever-faithful Ferda and Foix, traveled up the road in the fine weather in gentle, easy stages, a world apart from winter’s desperate ride. Each evening Cazaril was helped from his horse swearing that tomorrow they would go more slowly, and each morning he found himself even more eager to push on. At length the distant Zangre again rose before his eyes. Against the backdrop of puffy white clouds, blue sky, and green fields, it seemed a rich ornament to the landscape.

A few miles out of Cardegoss they encountered another procession on the road. Men in the livery of the provincar of Labran escorted three carts and a trailing tail of mules and servants. Two of the carts were piled with baggage. The third cart’s canvas top, rolled up to open the sides to the spring scenery, shaded several ladies.

The ladies’ cart pulled to the side of the road and a servingwoman leaned out to call to one of the outriders. The Labran sergeant bent his head to her, rode up in turn to Palli and Cazaril, and saluted.

“If it please you, sirs, if one of you is the Castillar dy Cazaril, my lady the Dowager Royina Sara bid—begs,” he corrected himself, “you to wait upon her.”

The present provincar of Labran, Cazaril was reminded, was Royina Sara’s nephew. He gathered that he was witnessing her removal—or retreat—to her family estates there. He returned the salute. “I am entirely at the royina’s service.”

Foix helped Cazaril from his horse. Steps were let down from the back of the cart, and the ladies and maidservants descended to stroll together about the fallow field nearby and examine the spring wildflowers. Sara remained seated in the shadow of the canvas. “Please you, Castillar,” she called softly, “I am glad for this chance crossing. Can you bide with me a moment?”

“I am honored, lady.” He ducked his head and climbed into the cart, seating himself on the padded bench opposite hers. The baggage mules plodded on past them. A peaceful, distant murmur enveloped the scene, of birdsong, low voices, the bridle-jingle and champing of the horses let to graze by the roadside, and the occasional trill of laugher from the maidservants.

Sara was dressed now in a simply cut gown and vest-cloak of lavender and black, mourning for poor doomed Orico, presumably.

“My apologies,” said Cazaril, with an acknowledging nod at her garb, “for not attending the roya’s funeral. I was not yet recovered enough to travel.”

She waved this away. “From what Iselle and Bergon and Lady Betriz have told me, it is a miracle you survived your wounds.”

“Yes, well . . . precisely.”

She gave him an oddly sympathetic look.

“Orico was taken up safely, then?” Cazaril asked.

“Yes, by the Bastard. As gods-rejected in death as he was in life. It stirred a bit of unpleasant speculation about his parentage, alas.”

“Not so, lady. He was surely Ias’s child. I think the Bastard has been special guardian of his House since Fonsa’s reign. And so this time the god picked first, not last.”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “A sorry guardianship, if so. On the day before he died, Orico said to me that he wished he’d been born the son of a woodcutter, and not the son of the roya of Chalion. Of all the epitaphs on his death, his own seems the most apposite to me.” Her voice grew a shade more sour. “Martou dy Jironal, they say, was taken up by the Father.”

“So I had heard. They sent his body to his daughter in Thistan to take charge of. Well, he, too, had his part to play, and little enough joy it brought him in the end.” He offered after a moment, “I can personally guarantee you, though, his brother Dondo was carried to the Bastard’s hell.”

A small, grim smile curved her lips. “Perchance he may learn better manners there.”

There seemed nothing to add to this, as epitaphs went.

Cazaril was reminded of a curiosity, and diffidently cleared his throat. “The day before Orico died. And which day would that have been, my lady?”

Her eyes flew to his, and her dark brows went up. After a moment she said, “Why, the day after Iselle’s wedding, of course.”

“Not the day before? Martou dy Jironal seemed strangely misinformed, then. Not to mention premature in certain of his actions. And . . . it seems to me very like a certain cursed luck, to die just a day before one’s rescue.”

“I, and Orico’s physician, and Archdivine Mendenal, who all attended on him together, will all swear that Orico yet lived to speak to us that afternoon and evening, and did not breathe his sad last until early the next morning.” She met his gaze very directly indeed, her lips still set in that same grim curve. “And so Iselle’s marriage to Royse Bergon is unassailably valid.”

And thus a legal quibble was rendered unavailable to disaffected lords as a pretext for defiance. Cazaril imagined it, her daylong secret deathwatch beside the gelid bloated corpse of her husband. What had she thought about, what had she reflected upon, as the hours crept by in that sealed chamber? And yet she had made of that horror a pragmatic gift for Iselle and Bergon, for the House of Chalion that she was departing. He pictured her suddenly as a tidy housewife, sweeping out her old familiar rooms for the last time, and leaving a vase of flowers on the hearth for the new owners.

“I . . . think I see.”

“I think you do. You always had very seeing eyes, Castillar.” She added after a moment, “And a discreet tongue.”

“A condition of my service, Royina.”

“You have served the House of Chalion well. Better, perhaps, than it deserved.”

“But not half so well as it needed.”

She sighed agreement.

He made polite inquiry after her plans; she was indeed returning to her home province, to take residence at a country estate happily to be entirely under her own direction. She seemed not just resigned but eager to escape Cardegoss and leave it to her successors. Cazaril, rising, wished her well, and a safe journey, with all his heart. He kissed her hands; she in turn kissed his and, briefly, touched her fingertips to his forehead as he bent to her.

He watched her train of carts rumble away, wincing in sympathy as they jounced over the ruts. The roads of Chalion could use improvement, Cazaril decided, and he had ridden over enough of them to know. He’d seen roads in the Archipelago made wide and smooth for all weathers—perhaps Iselle and Bergon needed to import some Roknari masons. Better roads, with fewer bandits on them, would do a world of good for Chalion. Chalion-Ibra, he corrected this thought, and smiled as Foix gave him a leg up onto his horse.

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

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

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

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

“I believe so, March.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How came you by the post?”

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

“Lately?”

“Excuse me?”

“You are lately appointed?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not old at all,” corrected Betriz sturdily.

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

“All ready,” reported Bergon mysteriously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But . . . but . . .”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Miraculously so.”

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

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

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

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

“Once or twice,” Umegat admitted.

“How long does it take to recover?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“About twenty years.”

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

“No. Not yet.”

“Oh.”

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

“I should be honored with his confidence.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bless me, Cazaril, before you go.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Author

One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, LOIS McMASTER BUJOLD burst onto the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including the Nebula Award (for Falling Free), three Hugo Awards for Best Novel (The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella Mountains of Mourning. Her short story, “Labyrinth,” won first place in Analog Magazine's annual awards. The mother of two, Ms. Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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