The Curse of Chalion

Chapter 4

So it was Cazaril found himself, the next morning, introduced into the young ladies’ schoolroom by the Provincara herself. This sunny little chamber was on the east side of the keep, on the top floor occupied by Royesse Iselle, Lady Betriz, their waiting woman, and a maid. Royse Teidez had chambers for his similar subhousehold in the new building across the courtyard, rather more generously proportioned, Cazaril suspected, and with better fireplaces. Iselle’s schoolroom was simply furnished with a pair of small tables, chairs, a single bookcase half-empty, and a couple of chests. With the addition of Cazaril, feeling overtall and awkward under the low-beamed ceiling, and the two young women, it was as full as it would hold. The perpetual waiting woman had to take her sewing into the next chamber, though the doors were left propped open between them.

It seemed Cazaril was to have a class, not just a pupil. A maiden of Iselle’s rank would almost never be left alone, and certainly not with a man, even a prematurely aged and convalescent one of her own household. Cazaril didn’t know how the two ladies felt about this tacit arrangement, but he was secretly relieved. Never had he felt more repulsively male—uncouth, clumsy, and degraded. In all, this cheerful, peaceful feminine atmosphere was about as far from a Roknari galley rower’s bench as it was possible for Cazaril to imagine, and he had to swallow a lump of delirious joy at the contrast as he ducked his head under the lintel and stepped inside.

The Provincara announced him briskly as Iselle’s new secretary-tutor, “Just as your brother has,” a clearly unexpected gift that Iselle, after a blink of surprise, accepted without the least demur. By her calculating look, the novelty and increased status of being instructed by a man was quite pleasing to her. Lady Betriz, too, Cazaril was heartened to note, looked alert and interested rather than wary or hostile.

Cazaril trusted he appeared scholarly enough to fool the young ladies, the wool merchant’s neat brown gown secured today by the castle warder’s silver-studded belt without the sword. He’d had the forethought to supply himself with all the books in Darthacan that a fast rummage through the remains of the late provincar’s library could supply, some half dozen random volumes. He dropped them with an impressive thump upon one of the little tables and favored both new pupils with a deliberately sinister smile. If this was to be anything like training young soldiers, young horses, or young hawks, the key was to take the initiative from the first moment, and keep it thereafter. He could be as hollow as a drum, so long as he was as loud.

The Provincara departed as briskly as she’d arrived. In the interest of pretending he had a plan while devising one, Cazaril started right in by testing the royesse’s command of Darthacan. He had her read a random page from one of the volumes, as it chanced on a topic that Cazaril knew well: mining and sapping fortified lines during sieges. With much help and prompting, Iselle stumbled through three laborious paragraphs. Two or three questions Cazaril put to her in Darthacan challenging her to explicate the contents of what she’d just read left her sputtering and floundering.

“Your accent is terrible,” he told her frankly. “A Darthacan would find you nearly unintelligible.”

Her head came up, and she glared at him. “My governess said I was quite good. She said that I had a very melodic intonation.”

“Yes; you speak like a South Ibran fishwoman hawking her wares. They are very melodic, too. But any Darthacan lordling, and they are all arrogant as wasps about their dreadful tongue, would laugh in your face.” At least, they had in Cazaril’s, once. “Your governess flattered you, Royesse.”

She frowned across at him. “I take it you do not fancy yourself a flatterer, Castillar?”

Her tone and terms were a bit more double-leveled than he’d expected. His ironic return bow, from his seat on a chest drawn up to her table’s other side, was pulled shorter and a little less apologetic than he’d intended by the yank of his adhesions. “I trust I am not a complete lout. But if you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I’m sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds. Royesse.”

Her nostrils flared; her lips thinned. Belatedly, it occurred to Cazaril that perhaps this was the wrong approach. She was a tender young thing, barely more than a girl—perhaps he ought to soften—and if she complained of him to the Provincara, he might lose—

She turned the page. “Let us,” she said in an icy voice, “go on.”

Five gods, he’d seen exactly that same look of frustrated fury in the eyes of the young men who’d picked themselves up, spat the dirt from their mouths, and gone on to become his best lieutenants. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so difficult after all. With great effort, he cranked a broad grin downward into a grave frown and nodded august tutorly permission. “Continue.”

An hour flew by in this pleasant, easy employment. Well, easy for him. When he noticed the royesse rubbing her temples, and lines deepening between her brows that had nothing to do with mere offense, he desisted and took the book back from her.

Lady Betriz had followed along at Iselle’s side, her lips moving silently. Cazaril had her repeat the exercise. With Iselle’s example before her, she was quicker, but alas she suffered from the same broad South Ibran accent, probably from the same South Ibran prior instructress, as Iselle. Iselle listened intently as they waded through corrections.

They had all earned their noon dinner by that time, Cazaril felt; but he had one more displeasing task to accomplish, strictly charged to him by the Provincara. He leaned back, as the girls stirred and made to rise, and cleared his throat.

“That was quite a spectacular gesture you brought off yesterday at the temple, Royesse.”

Her wide mouth curved up; her curiously thick eyelids narrowed in pleasure. “Thank you, Castillar.”

He let his own smile grow astringent. “A most showy insult, to put upon a man constrained to stand and not answer back. At least the idlers were vastly amused, judging by their laughter.”

Her lips constricted into an uneasy purse. “There is much ill done in Chalion that I can do nothing about. It was little enough.”

“If it was well, it was well-done,” he conceded with a deceptively cordial nod. “Tell me, Royesse, what steps did you take beforehand, to assure yourself of the man’s guilt?”

Her chin stopped in mid-rise. “Ser dy Ferrej . . . said it of him. And I know him to be honest.”

“Ser dy Ferrej said, and I recall his words precisely, for he uses his words so, that he’d heard it said the judge had taken the duelist’s bribe. He did not claim firsthand knowledge of the deed. Did you check with him, after dinner, to find out how he came by his belief?”

“No . . . If I’d told anyone what I was planning, they would have forbidden me.”

“You, ah, told Lady Betriz, though.” Cazaril favored the dark-eyed woman with a nod.

Stiffening, Betriz replied warily, “It’s why I suggested asking the first flame.”

Cazaril shrugged. “The first flame, ah. But your hand is young and strong and steady, Lady Iselle. Are you sure that first flame wasn’t all your doing?”

Her frown deepened. “The townsmen applauded . . .”

“Indeed. On average, one-half of all supplicants to come before a judge’s bench must depart angry and disappointed. But not, by that, necessarily wronged.”

That one hit the target, by the change in her face. The shift from defiant to stricken was not especially pleasurable to watch. “But . . . but . . .”

Cazaril sighed. “I’m not saying you were wrong, Royesse. This time. I’m saying you were running blindfolded. And if it wasn’t headlong into a tree, it was only by the mercy of the gods, and not by any care of yours.”

“Oh.”

“You may have slandered an honest man. Or you may have struck a blow for justice. I don’t know. The point is . . . neither do you.”

Her oh this time was so repressed as to be unvoiced.

The horribly practical part of Cazaril’s mind that had eased him through so many scrapes couldn’t help adding, “And right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.” Damn, but that was no remark to make to a gentle maiden . . . with an effort, he kept from clapping his hands over his mouth, a gesture that would do nothing to prop up his pose as a high-minded and earnest corrector.

Iselle’s brows went up and stayed up, for a moment, this time. So did Lady Betriz’s.

After an unnervingly long and thoughtful silence, Iselle said quietly, “I thank you for your good counsel, Castillar.”

He returned her an approving nod. Good. If he’d got through that sticky one all right, he was halfway home with her. And now, thank the gods, on to the Provincara’s generous table . . .

Iselle sat back and folded her hands in her lap. “You are to be my secretary, as well as my tutor, Cazaril, yes?”

Cazaril sank back. “Yes, my lady? You wish some assistance with a letter?” He almost added suggestively, After dinner?

“Assistance. Yes. But not with a letter. Ser dy Ferrej said you were once a courier, is that right?”

“I once rode for the provincar of Guarida, my lady. When I was younger.”

“A courier is a spy.” Her regard had grown disquietingly calculating.

“Not necessarily, though it was sometimes hard to . . . convince people otherwise. We were trusted messengers, first and foremost. Not that we weren’t supposed to keep our eyes open and report our observations.”

“Good enough.” The chin came up. “Then my first task for you, as my secretary, is one of observation. I want you to find out if I made a mistake or not. I can’t very well go down into town, or ask around—I have to stay up on top of this hill in my”—she grimaced—“feather bed. But you—you can do it.” She gazed across at him with an expression of the most disturbing faith.

His stomach felt suddenly as hollow as a drum, and it had nothing to do with the lack of food. Apparently, he had just put on slightly too good a show. “I . . . I . . . immediately?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Discreetly. As opportunity presents.”

Cazaril swallowed. “I’ll try what I can do, my lady.”

On his way down the stairs to his own chamber, one floor below, a vision surfaced in Cazaril’s thoughts from his days as a page in this very castle. He’d fancied himself a bit of a swordsman, on account of being a shade better than the half dozen other young highborn louts who’d shared his duties and his training in the provincar’s household. One day a new young page had arrived, a short, surly fellow; the provincar’s swordmaster had invited Cazaril to step up against him at the next training session. Cazaril had developed himself a pretty thrust or two, including a flourish that, with a real blade, would have neatly nipped the ears off most of his comrades. He’d tried his special pass on the new fellow, coming to a happy halt with the dulled edge flat against the newcomer’s head—only to look down and see his opponent’s light practice blade bent nearly double against his gut padding.

That page had gone on, Cazaril had heard, to become the swordmaster for the roya of Brajar. In time, Cazaril had to own himself an indifferent swordsman—his interests had always been too broad-scattered for him to maintain the necessary obsession. But he’d never forgotten that moment, looking down in surprise at his mock-death.

It bemused him that his first lesson with the delicate Iselle had churned up that old memory. Odd little flickers of intensity, to burn in such disparate eyes . . . what had that short page’s name been . . . ?

Cazaril found that a couple more tunics and trousers had arrived on his bed while he was out, relics of the castle warder’s younger and thinner days, unless he missed his guess. He went to put them away in the chest at the foot of his bed and was reminded of the dead wool merchant’s book, folded inside the black vest-cloak there. He picked it up, thinking to walk it down to the temple this afternoon, but then set it back. Possibly, within its ciphered pages, might lurk some of that moral certainty the royesse sought of him—that he had pricked her to seek of him—some clearer evidence for or against the shamed judge. He would examine it himself, first. Perhaps it would provide some guidance to the secrets of Valenda’s local scene.

After dinner, Cazaril lay down for a marvelous little nap. He was just coming to luxuriant wakefulness again when Ser dy Ferrej knocked on his door, and delivered to him the books and records of the royesse’s chambers. Betriz followed shortly with a box of letters for him to put in order. Cazaril spent the remainder of the afternoon starting to organize the randomly piled lot, and familiarize himself with the matters therein.

The financial records were fairly simple—the purchase of this or that trivial toy or bit of trumpery jewelry; lists of presents given and received; a somewhat more meticulous listing of jewels of genuine value, inheritances, or gifts. Clothing. Iselle’s riding horse, the mule Snowflake, and their assorted trappings. Items such as linens or furniture were subsumed, presumably, in the Provincara’s accounts, but would in future be Cazaril’s charge. A lady of rank was normally sent off to marriage with cartloads—Cazaril hoped not boatloads—of fine goods, and Iselle was surely due to begin the years of accumulation against that future journey. Should he list himself as Item One in that bridal inventory?

He pictured the entry: Sec’t’y-tutor, One ea. Gift from Grandmama. Aged thirty-five. Badly damaged in shipping. Value . . . ?

The bridal procession was a one-way journey, normally, although Iselle’s mother the dowager royina had returned . . . broken, Cazaril tried not to think. The Lady Ista puzzled and disturbed him. It was said that madness ran in some noble families. Not Cazaril’s—his family had run to financial fecklessness and unlucky political alliances instead, just as devastating in the long run. Was Iselle at risk . . . ? Surely not.

Iselle’s correspondence was scant but interesting. Some early, kindly little letters from her grandmother, from before the widowed royina had moved her family back home from court, full of advice on the general order of be good, obey your mother, say your prayers, help take care of your little brother. One or two notes from uncles or aunts, the Provincara’s other children—Iselle had no other relatives on her father the late Roya Ias’s side, Ias having been the only surviving child of his own ill-fated father. A regular series of birthday and holy day letters from her much older half brother, the present roya, Orico.

Those were in the roya’s own hand, Cazaril noted with approval, or at least, he trusted the roya did not employ any secretary with such a crabbed and difficult fist. They were for the most part stiff little missives, the effort of a man full-grown attempting to be kindly to a child, except when they broke into descriptions of Orico’s beloved menagerie. Then they became spontaneous and flowing for the space of a paragraph or two, in enthusiasm and, perhaps, trust that here at least was an interest the two half siblings might share on the same level.

This pleasant task was interrupted in turn late in the afternoon with the word, brought by a page, that Cazaril’s presence was now required to ride out with the royesse and Lady Betriz. He hastily donned the borrowed sword and found the horses saddled and waiting in the courtyard. Cazaril hadn’t had a leg across a horse for nearly three years; the page eyed him with surprise and disfavor when Cazaril asked for a mounting block, to ease himself gingerly aboard. They gave him a nice mild-mannered beast, the same bay gelding he’d seen the royesse’s waiting woman riding that first afternoon. As they formed up, the waiting woman leaned from a window in the keep and waved them out with a piece of linen and evident goodwill. But the ride proved much milder and more placid than he’d anticipated, a mere jaunt down to the river and back. Since he declared at the outset of the excursion that all conversation by the party must be conducted in Darthacan, it was also largely silent, adding to the general restfulness.

And then supper, and then to his chamber, where he pottered about trying on his new old clothing, and folding it away, and attempting the first few pages of deciphering the poor dead fool of a wool merchant’s book. But Cazaril’s eyes grew heavy over this task, and he slept like a block till morning.

As it had begun, so it went on. In the morning, lessons with the two lovely young ladies in Darthacan or Roknari or geography or arithmetic or geometry. For geography, he filched away the good maps from Teidez’s tutor and entertained the royesse with suitably edited accounts of some of his more exotic past journeys around Chalion, Ibra, Brajar, great Darthaca, or the five perpetually quarreling Roknari princedoms along the north coast.

His more recent slave’s-eye views of the Roknar Archipelago, he edited much more severely. Iselle’s and Betriz’s open boredom with court Roknari, he discovered, was susceptible to exactly the same cure as he’d used on the couple of young pages from the provincar of Guarida’s household he’d once been detailed to teach the language. He traded the ladies one word of rude Roknari (albeit not the most rude) for every twenty of court Roknari they demonstrated themselves to have memorized. Not that they would ever get to use that vocabulary, but it might be well for them to be able to recognize things said in their hearing. And they giggled charmingly.

Cazaril approached his first assigned duty, quietly investigating the probity of the provincial justiciar, with trepidation. Oblique inquiries of the Provincara and dy Ferrej filled in background without supplying certainty, as neither had crossed the man in his professional capacity, merely in unexceptionable social contacts. A few excursions down into town to try to find anyone who’d known Cazaril seventeen years ago and would speak to him frankly proved a little disheartening. The only man who recognized him with certainty at sight was an elderly baker who’d maintained a long and lucrative career selling sweets to all the castle’s parade of pages, but he was an amiable fellow not inclined to lawsuits.

Cazaril started working through the wool merchant’s notebook leaf by leaf, as quickly as his other duties permitted him. Some truly disgusting early experiments in calling down the Bastard’s demons had been entirely ineffective, Cazaril was relieved to observe. The dead duelist’s name never appeared but with some excoriating adjectives attached, or sometimes just the adjectives alone; the live judge’s name did not turn up explicitly. But before Cazaril had the tangle even half-unraveled, the question was taken out of his inexpert hands.

An Officer of Inquiry from the Provincar of Baocia’s court arrived, from the busy town of Taryoon, to which the Dowager’s son had moved his capital upon inheriting his father’s gift. It had taken, Cazaril counted off in his head later, just about as many days as one could expect for a letter from the Provincara to her son to be written, dispatched, and read, for orders to be passed down to Baocia’s Chancellery of Justice, and for the Inquirer to ready himself and his staff for travel. Privilege indeed. Cazaril was unsure of the Provincara’s allegiance to the processes of law, but he wagered the business of leaving loose enemies untidily about had plucked some, ah, housewifely nerve of hers.

The next day the judge Vrese was discovered to have ridden off in the night with two servants and some hastily packed bags and chests, leaving a disrupted household and a fireplace full of ashes from burned papers.

Cazaril tried to discourage Iselle from taking this as proof either, but that was a bit of a stretch even for his slow judgment. The alternative—that Iselle had been touched by the goddess that day—disturbed him to contemplate. The gods, the learned theologians of the Holy Family assured men, worked in ways subtle, secret, and above all, parsimonious: through the world, not in it. Even for the bright, exceptional miracles of healing—or dark miracles of disaster or death—men’s free will must open a channel for good or evil to enter waking life. Cazaril had met, in his time, some two or three persons who he suspected might be truly god-touched, and a few more who’d plainly thought they were. They had not any of them been comfortable to be around. Cazaril trusted devoutly that the Daughter of Spring had gone away satisfied with her avatar’s action. Or just gone away . . .

Iselle had little contact with her brother’s household across the courtyard, except to meet at meals, or when they made up a party for a ride out into the countryside. Cazaril gathered the two children had been closer, before the onset of puberty had begun to drive them into the separate worlds of men and women.

The royse’s stern secretary-tutor, Ser dy Sanda, seemed unnecessarily unnerved by Cazaril’s empty rank of castillar. He laid claim to a higher place at table or in procession above the mere ladies’ tutor with an insincerely apologetic smile that served—every meal—to draw more attention than it purported to soothe. Cazaril considered trying to explain to the man just how much he didn’t care, but doubted he’d get through, so contented himself with merely smiling back, a response which confused dy Sanda terribly as he kept trying to place it as some sort of subtle tactic. When dy Sanda showed up in Iselle’s schoolroom one day to demand his maps be returned, he seemed to expect Cazaril to defend them as though they were secret state papers. Cazaril produced them promptly, with gentle thanks. Dy Sanda was forced to depart with his huff barely half-vented.

Lady Betriz’s teeth were set. “That fellow! He acts like, like . . .”

“Like one of the castle cats,” Iselle supplied, “when a strange cat comes around. What have you done to make him hiss at you so, Cazaril?”

“I promise you, I haven’t pissed outside his window,” Cazaril offered earnestly, a remark that made Betriz choke on a giggle—ah, that was better—and look around guiltily to be sure the waiting woman was too far off to hear. Had that been too crude? He was sure he didn’t quite have the hang of young ladies yet, but they had not complained of him, despite the Darthacan. “I suppose he imagines I would prefer his job. He can’t have thought it through.”

Or perhaps he had, Cazaril realized abruptly. When Teidez had been born, his heirship to his new-wed half brother Orico had been much less apparent. But as year had followed year, and Orico’s royina still failed to conceive a child, interest—possibly unhealthy interest—in Teidez must surely have begun to grow in the court of Chalion. Perhaps that was why Ista had left the capital, taking her children out of that fervid atmosphere to this quiet, clean country town. A wise move, withal.

“Oh, no, Cazaril,” said Iselle. “Stay up here with us. It’s much nicer.”

“Indeed, yes,” he assured her.

“It’s not just. You’ve twice Ser dy Sanda’s wits, and ten times his travels! Why do you endure him so, so . . .” Betriz seemed at a loss for words. “Quietly,” she finally finished. She stared away for a moment, as if afraid he would construe she’d swallowed a term less flattering.

Cazaril smiled crookedly at his unexpected partisan. “Do you think it would make him happier if I presented myself as a target for his foolishness?”

“Clearly, yes!”

“Well, then. Your question answers itself.”

She opened her mouth, and closed it. Iselle nearly choked on a short laugh.

Cazaril’s sympathy for dy Sanda increased, however, one morning when he turned up, his face so drained of blood as to be almost green, with the alarming news that his royal charge had vanished away, not to be found in house or kitchen, kennel or stable. Cazaril buckled on his sword and readied himself to ride out with the searchers, his mind already quartering the countryside and the town, weighing the options of injuries, bandits, the river . . . taverns? Was Teidez old enough yet to attempt a whore? Reason enough to scrape off his clinging attendants.

Before Cazaril was moved to point out the range of possibilities to dy Sanda, whose mind was utterly fixated on bandits, Teidez himself rode in to the courtyard, muddy and damp, a crossbow slung over his shoulder, a boy groom following behind, and a dead fox hung over his saddlebow. Teidez stared at the half-assembled cavalcade with surly horror.

Cazaril abandoned his attempt to climb on his horse without pulling something that hurt, lowered himself to a seat on his mounting block with the bay gelding’s reins in his hand, and watched in fascination as four grown men began to belabor the boy and the obvious.

Where have you been? scarcely needed asked, Why did you do that? likewise, Why didn’t you tell anyone? grew more apparent by the minute. Teidez endured it with his teeth closed, for the most part.

When dy Sanda paused for breath, Teidez thrust his limp and ruddy prey at Beetim the huntsman. “Here. Skin this for me. I want the pelt.”

“Pelt’s no good at this season, young lord,” said Beetim severely. “The hair’s all thin, and falls out.” He shook his finger at the vixen’s dark dugs, heavy with milk. “And it’s bad luck to take a mother animal in the Daughter’s season. I’ll have to burn its whiskers, or its ghost’ll be back, stirring up my dogs all night long. And where are the cubs, eh? You should’ve slain them as well, while you were at it, it’s right cruel to leave them to starve. Or have you two gone and hidden them somewhere, eh?” His glower took in the shrinking boy groom.

Teidez threw his crossbow to the cobbles, and snarled in exasperation, “We looked for the den. We couldn’t find it.”

“Yes, and you—!” dy Sanda turned on the unlucky groom. “You know you should have come to me—!” He abused the groom in much blunter terms than he’d dared to vent upon the royse, ending with the command, “Beetim, go beat the boy for his stupidity and insolence!”

“With a will, m’lord,” said Beetim grimly, and stalked away toward the stables, the fox’s scruff in one hand and the cowering groom’s in the other.

The two senior grooms led the horses back to their stalls. Cazaril gave up his mount gladly and considered his breakfast—now, it appeared, not to be indefinitely delayed. Dy Sanda, anger succeeding his terror, confiscated the crossbow and drove the sullen Teidez indoors. Teidez’s voice floated back in a last counterargument before the door banged closed upon the pair, “But I’m so bored . . .!”

Cazaril puffed a laugh. Five gods, but what a horrible age that was to be for any boy. All full of impulses and energy, plagued with incomprehensible arbitrary adults with stupid ideas that did not involve skipping morning prayers to go fox hunting on a fair spring morning—he glanced up at the sky overhead, brightening to a washed cerulean as the dawn mists burned away. The quietude of the Provincara’s household, balm to Cazaril’s soul, was doubtless acid to poor constricted Teidez.

Any word of advice from the newly employed Cazaril was not likely to be well received by dy Sanda, as matters stood between them at present. But it seemed to Cazaril that if dy Sanda was looking to guard his future influence over the royse when he came to a man’s estate with its full power and privilege of a high lord—at the very least—of Chalion, he was going about it exactly backward. Teidez was more likely to shed him at the first opportunity.

Still, dy Sanda was a conscientious man, Cazaril had to grant. A viler man of like ambition might well be pandering to Teidez’s appetites instead of attempting to control them, winning not loyalty but addiction. Cazaril had met a noble scion or two so corrupted by his attendants . . . but not in dy Baocia’s household. While the Provincara was in charge, Teidez was unlikely to encounter such parasites. On that comforting reflection, Cazaril pushed off the block and climbed to his feet.