The Curse of Chalion

Chapter 10

Cazaril sat in his bedchamber with a profligacy of candles and the classic Brajaran verse romance The Legend of the Green Tree, and sighed in contentment. The Zangre’s library had been famous in the days of Fonsa the Wise but neglected ever since—this volume, judging by the dust, hadn’t been pulled off the shelves since the end of Fonsa’s reign. But it was the luxury of enough candles to make reading late at night a pleasure and not a strain, as much as Behar’s versifying, that gave his heart joy. And a little guilt—the charges for good wax candles upon Iselle’s household accounts were going to add up after a time, and look a trifle odd. Behar’s thundering cadences echoing in his head, he moistened his finger and turned a page.

Behar’s stanzas weren’t the only things around here thundering and echoing. He glanced upward, as rapid thumps and scrapes and the muffled sounds of laughter and calling voices penetrated from the ceiling. Well, enforcing reasonable bedtimes in Iselle’s household was Nan dy Vrit’s job, not his, thank the gods. He returned his eye to the poet’s theologically symbolic visions, and ignored the clatter, till the pig squealed shrilly.

Even the great Behar could not compete with that mystery. His lips drawing back in a grin, Cazaril set the volume down on his coverlet and swung his still-trousered legs out of bed, fastened his tunic, wriggled his feet into his shoes, and picked up the candle with the glass chimney to light his way up the back stairs.

He met Dondo dy Jironal coming down. Dondo was dressed in his usual courtier’s attire, blue brocade tunic and linen-woolen trousers, though his white vest-cloak swung from his hand, along with his sword in its scabbard and sword belt. His face was set and flushed. Cazaril’s mouth opened to give some polite greeting, but his words died on his lips at Dondo’s murderous glare. Dondo stormed on past him without a word.

Cazaril swung into the upstairs corridor to find all its wall sconces lit and an inexplicable array of people gathered. Not only Betriz, Iselle, and Nan dy Vrit, but Lord dy Rinal, one of his friends and another lady, and Ser dy Sanda were all crowded around laughing. They scattered to the walls as Teidez and a page blasted through their midst, in hot pursuit of a scrubbed and beribboned young pig trailing a length of scarf. The page tackled the animal at Cazaril’s feet, and Teidez hooted triumph.

“In the bag, in the bag!” dy Sanda called.

He and Lady Betriz came up as Teidez and the page collaborated on inserting the squealing creature into a large canvas sack, where it clearly didn’t want to go. Betriz bent to give the struggling animal a quick scratch behind its flapping ears. “My thanks, Lady Pig! You played your part superbly. But it’s time to go back to your home now.”

The page hoisted the heavy sack up over his shoulder, saluted the assembled company, and staggered off, grinning.

“What is going on up here?” demanded Cazaril, torn between laughter and alarm.

“Oh, it was the greatest jest!” cried Teidez. “You should have seen the look on Lord Dondo’s face!”

Cazaril just had, and it hadn’t inspired him with mirth. His stomach sank. “What have you done?”

Iselle tossed her head. “Neither my hints not Lady Betriz’s plain words having served to discourage Lord Dondo’s attentions, or to convince him they were unwelcome, we conspired to make him the assignation of love he desired. Teidez undertook to secure our player from the stable. So, instead of the virgin Lord Dondo was confidently expecting to find waiting when he went tiptoeing up to Betriz’s bed in the dark, he found—Lady Pig!”

“Oh, you traduce the poor pig, Royesse!” cried Lord dy Rinal. “She may have been a virgin, too, after all!”

“I’m sure she was, or she would not have squealed so,” the laughing lady on his arm put in.

“It’s only too bad,” said dy Sanda acidly, “she was not to Lord Dondo’s taste. I confess I’m surprised. From all reports of the man, I’d have thought he’d lie down with anything.” His eyes flicked sideways, to check the effect of these words on the grinning Teidez.

“And after we’d doused her with my best Darthacan perfume, too,” sighed Betriz hugely. The merriment in her eyes was underscored by a glittering rage and sharp satisfaction.

“You should have told me,” Cazaril began. Told him what? Of this prank? It was clear enough they knew he would have suppressed it. Of Dondo’s continued pressings? Just how vile had they been? His fingernails bit into his palm. And what could he have done about them, eh? Gone to Orico, or Royina Sara? Futile . . .

Lord dy Rinal said, “It will be the best tale of the week in all of Cardegoss—and the best tail, too, if a curly one. Lord Dondo hasn’t played the butt for years, and I do think it was past his turn. I can hear the oinking already. The man won’t sit to a pork dinner for months without hearing it. Royesse, Lady Betriz”—he swept them a bow—“I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The two courtiers and the lady took themselves off, presumably to spread the jest to whatever of their friends were still awake.

Cazaril, suppressing the first several remarks trying to rip from his lips, finally ground out, “Royesse, that was not wise.”

Iselle frowned back, undaunted. “The man wears the robes of a holy general of the Lady of Spring yet undertakes to rob women of their virginity, sacred to Her, just as he robs . . . well, so you say we have no proof of what else he robs. We had proof enough of this, by the goddess! At least this may teach him the unwisdom of attempting to steal from my household. The Zangre is supposed to be a royal court, not a barnyard!”

“Cheer up, Cazaril,” dy Sanda advised him. “The man cannot revenge his outraged vanity upon the royse and royesse, after all.” He glanced around; Teidez had gone off up the corridor to collect the trampled ribbons the pig had shed in its attempted flight. He lowered his voice, and added, “And it was well worth the trouble for Teidez to see his, ah, hero in a less flattering light. When the amorous Lord Dondo stumbled out of Betriz’s bedchamber with the strings of his trousers in his hands, he found all our witnesses lined up waiting. Lady Pig nearly knocked him down, escaping between his legs. He looked an utter fool. It’s the best lesson I’ve been able to bring off all this month we’ve been here. Maybe we can start to regain some lost ground in that direction, eh?”

“I pray you may be right,” said Cazaril carefully. He did not say aloud his reflection that the royse and the royesse were the only people Dondo could not revenge himself upon.

Nevertheless, there was no sign of retaliation in the next several days. Lord Dondo took the raillery of dy Rinal and his friends with a thin smile, but a smile nonetheless. Cazaril sat to every meal in the expectation of, at the very least, a certain pig served up roasted with ribbons round its neck to the royesse’s table, but the dish did not appear. Betriz, at first infected by Cazaril’s nerves, was reassured. Cazaril was not. For all his hot temper, Dondo had amply demonstrated just how long he could wait for his opportunities without forgetting his wounds.

To Cazaril’s relief, the oinking about the castle corridors died down in less than a fortnight as new fêtes and pranks and gossip took its place. Cazaril began to hope Lord Dondo was going to swallow his so publicly administered medicine without spitting. Perhaps his elder brother, with larger horizons in view than the little society inside the Zangre’s walls, had undertaken to suppress any inappropriate response. There was news enough from the outside world to absorb grown men’s attention: sharpening of the civil war in South Ibra, banditry in the provinces, bad weather closing down the high passes unseasonably early.

In light of these last reports, Cazaril gave an eye to the logistics of transporting the royesse’s household, should the court decide to leave the Zangre early and remove to its traditional winter quarters before the Father’s Day. He was sitting in his office totting up horses and mules when one of Orico’s pages appeared at the antechamber door.

“My lord dy Cazaril, the roya bids you attend upon him in Ias’s Tower.”

Cazaril raised his eyebrows, set down his quill, and followed the boy, wondering what service the roya desired of him. Orico’s sudden fancies could be a trifle eccentric. Twice he had ordered Cazaril to accompany him on expeditions to his menagerie, there to perform no offices more complex than what a page or groom might well have done, holding his animals’ chains or fetching brushes or feed. Well, no—the roya had also asked leading questions about his sister Iselle’s doings, in an apparently desultory fashion. Cazaril had seized the opportunity to convey Iselle’s horror of being bartered to the Archipelago, or to any other Roknari prince, and had hoped the roya’s ear was more open than his sleepy demeanor would indicate.

The page guided him to the long room on the second floor of Ias’s Tower that dy Jironal used for his Chancellery when the court was resident in the Zangre. It was lined with shelves crammed with books, parchments, files, and a row of the seal-locked saddlebags used by the royal couriers. The two liveried guards standing at attention followed them within and took up their posts inside the door. Cazaril felt their eyes follow him.

Roya Orico was seated with the chancellor behind a large table scattered about with papers. Orico looked weary. Dy Jironal was spare and intense, dressed today in ordinary court garb, but with his chain of office around his neck. A courtier, whom Cazaril recognized as Ser dy Maroc, master of the roya’s armor and wardrobe, stood at one end of the table. One of Orico’s pages, looking very worried, stood at the other.

Cazaril’s escort announced, “The Castillar dy Cazaril, sire,” and then, after a glance at his fellow page, backed away to make himself invisible by the far wall.

Cazaril bowed. “Sire, my lord Chancellor?”

Dy Jironal stroked his steel-streaked beard, glanced at Orico, who shrugged, and said quietly, “Castillar, you will oblige His Majesty, please, by removing your tunic, and turning around.”

Cold unease knotted the words in his throat. Cazaril closed his lips, gave a single nod, and undid the frogs of his tunic. Tunic and vest-cloak he slipped off together and folded neatly over his arm. Face set, he made a military about-face, and stood still. Behind him, he heard two men stifle gasps, and a young voice mutter, “It was so. I did see.” Oh. That page. Yes.

Someone cleared his throat; Cazaril waited for the hot flush to die from his cheeks, then wheeled around again. He said steadily, “Was that all, sire?”

Orico fidgeted, and said, “Castillar, it is whispered . . . you are accused . . . an accusation has been made . . . that you were convicted of the crime of rape in Ibra, and flogged in the stocks.”

“That is a lie, sire. Who has said it?” He glanced at Ser dy Maroc, who had grown a trifle pale while Cazaril’s back was turned. Dy Maroc was not in either of the Jironal brothers’ direct employ, and he was not, so far as Cazaril knew, one of Dondo’s riper creatures . . . might he have been bribed? Or was he an honest gull?

A clear voice rang from the corridor. “I will too see my brother, and at once! I have the right!”

Orico’s guards surged forward, then hastily back again, as Royesse Iselle, trailed by a very pale Lady Betriz and Ser dy Sanda, burst into the chamber.

Iselle’s quick glance took in the tableau of men. She raised her chin, and cried, “What is this, Orico? Dy Sanda tells me you have arrested my secretary! Without even warning me!”

By the peeved ripple of Chancellor dy Jironal’s mouth, this intrusion had not been in his plans. Orico waved his thick hands. “No, no, not arrested. No one has arrested anyone. We are gathered to investigate an accusation.”

“What accusation?”

“A very serious one, Royesse, and not for your ears,” said dy Jironal. “You should withdraw.”

Pointedly ignoring him, she pulled up a chair and plunked down into it, folding her arms. “If it’s a serious accusation against the most trusted servant of my household, it is very much for my ears. Cazaril, what is this about?”

Cazaril gave her a slight bow. “A slander has apparently been circulated, by persons not yet named, that the scars on my back were punishment for a crime.”

“Last fall,” dy Maroc put in nervously. “In Ibra.”

By Betriz’s widening stare and caught breath, she had obtained a good close view of the ropy mess as she’d followed Iselle around Cazaril. Ser dy Sanda’s lips too pursed in a wince.

“May I put my tunic back on, sire?” Cazaril added stiffly.

“Yes, yes.” Orico waved a hasty assent.

“The nature of the crime, Royesse,” dy Jironal put in smoothly, “is such as to cast very serious doubts on whether the man should be a trusted servant of your, or indeed, any lady’s household.”

“What, rape?” said Iselle scornfully. “Cazaril? That is the most absurd lie I have ever heard.”

“And yet,” said dy Jironal, “there are the flogging scars.”

“The gift,” said Cazaril through his teeth, “of a Roknari oar-master, in return for a certain ill-considered defiance. Last fall, and off the coast of Ibra, that much is true.”

“Plausible, and yet . . . odd,” said dy Jironal in a judicious tone. “The cruelties of the galleys are legendary, but one would not think a competent oar-master would damage a slave past use.”

Cazaril half smiled. “I provoked him.”

“How so, Cazaril?” asked Orico, leaning back and squeezing the fat of his chin with one hand.

“Wrapped my oar-chain around his throat and did my best to strangle him. I almost succeeded, too. But they pulled me off him a trifle too soon.”

“Dear gods,” said the roya. “Were you trying to commit suicide?”

“I . . . am not quite sure. I’d thought I was past fury, but . . . I had been given a new benchmate, an Ibran boy, maybe fifteen years old. Kidnapped, he said, and I believed him. You could tell he was of good family, soft, well-spoken, not used to rough places—he blistered dreadfully in the sun, and his hands bled on the oars. Scared, defiant, ashamed . . . he said his name was Danni, but he never told me his surname. The oar-master made to use him after a manner forbidden to Roknari, and Danni struck out at him. Before I could stop him. It was insanely foolish, but the boy didn’t realize. . . . I thought—well, I wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I thought if I struck harder I could distract the oar-master from retaliating upon him.”

“By retaliating against you instead?” said Betriz wonderingly.

Cazaril shrugged. He’d kneed the oar-master hard enough in the groin, before wrapping the chain around his neck, to assure he wouldn’t be amorous again for a week, but a week would have passed soon enough, and then what? “It was a futile gesture. Would have been futile, but for the chance of the Ibran naval flotilla crossing our bows the next morning, and rescuing us all.”

Dy Sanda said encouragingly, “You have witnesses, then. Quite a large number of them, it sounds like. The boy, the galley slaves, the Ibran sailors . . . what became of the boy, after?”

“I don’t know. I lay ill in the Temple Hospital of the Mother’s Mercy in Zagosur for, for a while, and everyone was scattered and gone by the time I, um, left.”

“A very heroic tale,” said dy Jironal, in a dry tone well calculated to remind his listeners that this was Cazaril’s version. He frowned judiciously and glanced around the assembled company, his gaze lingering for a moment upon dy Sanda, and the outraged Iselle. “Still . . . I suppose you might ask the royesse to give you a month’s leave to ride to Ibra, and locate some of these, ah, conveniently scattered witnesses. If you can.”

Leave his ladies unguarded for a month, here? And would he survive the trip? Or be slain and buried in a shallow grave in the woods two hours’ ride out of Cardegoss, leaving the court to construe his guilt from his supposed flight? Betriz pressed her hand to whitened lips, but her glare was wholly for dy Jironal. Here, at least, was one who believed Cazaril’s word and not his back. He stood a little straighter.

“No,” he said at last. “I am slandered. My sworn word stands against hearsay. Unless you have some better support than castle gossip, I defy the lie. Or—where did you have the tale? Have you traced it to its source? Who accuses me—is it you, dy Maroc?” He frowned at the courtier.

“Explain it, dy Maroc,” dy Jironal invited, with a careless wave.

De Maroc took a breath. “I had it from an Ibran silk merchant that I dealt with for the roya’s wardrobe—he recognized the castillar, he said, from the flogging block in Zagosur, and was very shocked to see him here. He said it was an ugly case—that the castillar had ravished the daughter of a man who took him in and gave him shelter, and he remembered it very well, therefore, because it was so vile.”

Cazaril scratched his beard. “Are you sure he didn’t simply mistake me for another man?”

Dy Maroc replied stiffly, “No, for he had your name.”

Cazaril’s eyes narrowed. No mistake here—it was a lie outright, bought and paid for. But whose tongue had been bought? The courtier’s, or the merchant’s?

“Where is this merchant now?” dy Sanda broke in.

“Led his pack train back to Ibra, before the snows.”

Cazaril said, in a mild voice, “Just exactly when did you have this tale?”

Dy Maroc hesitated, apparently casting back, for his fingers twitched down by his side as if counting. “Three weeks gone, he rode out. It was just before he left that we talked.”

I know who’s lying now, yes. Cazaril’s lip turned up, without humor. That there was a real silk merchant, who had really ridden out of Cardegoss on that date, he had no doubt. But the Ibran had departed well before Dondo’s emerald bribe, and Dondo would not have troubled to invent this indirect route for getting rid of Cazaril until after he’d failed to purchase him direct. Unfortunately, this was not a line of reasoning Cazaril could adduce in his defense.

“The silk merchant,” dy Maroc added, “could have had no reason to lie.”

But you do. I wonder what it is? “You’ve known of this serious charge for over three weeks, yet only now have brought it to your lord’s attention? How very odd of you, dy Maroc.”

Dy Maroc glowered at him.

“If the Ibran’s gone,” said Orico querulously, “it’s impossible to find out who is telling the truth.”

“Then my lord dy Cazaril should surely be given the benefit of the doubt,” said dy Sanda, standing sternly upright. “You may not know him, but the Provincara dy Baocia, who gave him this trust, did; he’d served her late husband some six or seven years, in all.”

“In his youth,” said dy Jironal. “Men do change, you know. Especially in the brutality of war. If there is any doubt of the man, he should not be trusted in such a critical and, dare I say it”—he glanced pointedly at Betriz—“tempting post.”

Betriz’s long, incensed inhalation was, perhaps fortunately, cut across by Iselle, who cried, “Oh, rubbish! In the midst of the brutality of war, you yourself gave this man the keys to the fortress of Gotorget, which was the anchor of Chalion’s whole battle line in the north. You clearly trusted him enough then, March! Nor did he betray that trust.”

Dy Jironal’s jaw tightened, and he smiled thinly. “Why, how militant Chalion is grown, that our very maidens seek to give us better advice upon our strategies.”

“They could hardly give us worse,” growled Orico under his breath. Only a slight sideways flick of the eyes betrayed that dy Jironal had heard him.

Dy Sanda said, in a puzzled voice, “Yes, and why wasn’t the castillar ransomed with the rest of his officers when you surrendered Gotorget, dy Jironal?”

Cazaril clenched his teeth. Shut up, dy Sanda.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” said Orico. “Hm.”

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

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

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

“Oh, very good. Carry on, then.”

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

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

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

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

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

Iselle, Betriz, and dy Sanda surrounded Cazaril like an honor guard and marched him out of Ias’s Tower to the courtyard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does it matter to you, my lord?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Did you convert when you came to Chalion?”

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

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

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

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

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

“That is not what I meant.”

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

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

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

“Who from?”

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

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

“Yes, my lord.”

“How unusual?”

“Very unusual.”

“Can you tell me more?”

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

“Why not?”

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

“Why not?” Everyone else does.

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

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