The implications were clear, sinister, and repulsive. Given all the labor to which Goram had gone to present his fallen master in the most dignified possible light, Ista had no heart to watch that long body stripped of its courtly adornment and subjected to indignities, however necessary. "I expect Learned Tovia is well acquainted with all the tricks of nursing. I do not think I need to mark it."
Lady Cattilara looked relieved. With a carryon gesture to the maid and Goram, she ushered Ista and Liss back out onto the gallery, and walked with them toward Ista's chambers. Twilight was gathering; the courtyard was altogether in shadow, though the highest clouds glowed peach against the deepening blue.
"Goram is a very dutiful man," Cattilara said apologetically to Ista, "but I'm afraid he's more than a trifle simple. Though he is by far the best of Lord Illvin's men who have undertaken to attend him. They are too horrified, I think. Goram had a rougher life, before, and is not squeamish. I could not begin to manage Illvin without him."
Goram's tongue was simple, but his hands were not, in Ista's judgment, for all that he seemed the exemplar of a lack-witted attendant. "He appears to have a rare loyalty to Lord Illvin."
"No great wonder. I believe he had been an officer's servant, in his younger days, and been captured by the Roknari during one of Roya Orico's ill-fated campaigns, and sold as a slave to the Quadrenes. In any case, Illvin retrieved him—on one of his trips to Jokona, I think it was. I don't know if Illvin simply bought him, or what, though it seems there was some unpleasant misadventure involved in it all. Goram has stayed by Illvin since. I suppose he's too old to go off and try to make his way elsewhere." Cattilara's gaze flicked up. "What did the poor fellow try to talk to you about?"
Liss's mouth opened; Ista's hand nipped her arm before she could reply. Ista said, "I'm afraid he's not very lucid. I had hoped he was an old retainer and could tell me about the brothers' youth, but it proved not to be the case."
Cattilara smiled in bright sympathy. "When Lord dy Lutez was still alive, and young, you mean? I'm afraid the chancellor—was he already Roya Ias's chancellor, way back then, or just a rising courtier?—didn't come much to Porifors."
"So you've explained," said Ista coolly. She allowed Cattilara to ease her and Liss into their own chambers and escape back to her nursing supervision.
Or whatever it was she did, in Illvin's service. Ista wondered if there was anything lacing that goat's milk in addition to the honey, or what strange spices might be sprinkled on that food he bolted, once a day. After which he gabbled incoherently, then slept the sun around, unable to be roused.
A seductively rational consideration, that one. Not a single dose of poison from a Roknari dagger, but an ongoing regimen, from a source much closer to home? It would account for the visible symptoms quite exactly. She was sorry she had thought of it. Less disturbing than dreams of white fire, though.
"Why did you pinch my arm?" Liss demanded when the door had closed.
"To stop your speech."
"Well, I figured that. Why?"
"The marchess was not best pleased with her groom's forwardness. I wished to save him a cuffing, or at least, sharp words."
"Oh." Liss frowned, digesting this. "I'm sorry I let him trouble you. He seemed harmless in the stables. I liked how he handled the horse. I never dreamed he would ask you for anything so foolish." She added after a moment, "You were kind not to mock him, or refuse his plea."
Kindness had nothing to do with it. "He certainly went to great pains to make it as attractive a proposition as possible."
The merry glint returned to Liss's eye in response to her wry tone. "That's so. And yet... it made it all seem sadder, somehow."
Ista could only nod agreement.
IT EASED ISTA'S HEART TO HAVE LISS'S PLAIN, PRACTICAL ministrations again, readying her for bed. Liss bade her a cheerful good night and went off to sleep in the outer chamber, within call. She left the candle burning again at Ista's bidding, and Ista sat up on her pillows and meditated on the day's new revelations.
Her fingers drummed. She felt as restless as when she had used to pace round and round the battlements at Valenda Castle, till her feet blistered and the soles parted from her slippers and her attendants begged for mercy. That had been an opiate for thought, though, not its aid.
For all that it seemed a string of accidents had brought her to Porifors, the Bastard had claimed she was not here by chance. The gods were parsimonious, Lord dy Cazaril had once remarked to her, and took their chances where they found them. He had not pretended it was a positive feature, god-gnawed man that he was. Ista smiled in grim agreement.
How were prayers answered, anyway? For prayers were innumerable, but miracles were rare. The gods set others to their work, it seemed. For however vast a god might be, it had only the width of one soul at a time to reach into the world of matter: whether door, window, chink, crack, pinhole...
Demons, for all that they were supposedly legion, were not vast, possessing nothing like the infinite depth of those Eyes, but they seemed limited similarly; except that they could chew away at the edges of their living apertures, and so widen them, over time.
So who here must she reproach for praying for her advent? Or perhaps not for her, but just for help, and sending her was but a nasty jape of the Bastard's. She had absolved Lord Illvin when she'd thought him senseless, but if Goram spoke truth, he had periods of ... if not lucidity, arousal, after all. And Goram himself had certainly made supplication of her, with the work of his hands if not words. Someone had laid that silent prayer of the white rose across Illvin's empty plate. Lady Cattilara plainly ached with the pain of her longing for a child, and her husband... was not what he seemed, either.
Foolish beyond hope to send a middle-aged former madwoman running down the roads of Chalion to fetch up here, and for what? Failed saint, failed sorceress, failed royina, wife, mother, daughter, failed... well, lover was not a role she'd ever attempted. Less even than failure, in her hierarchy of woe. At first, upon discovering Lord Arhys's relation to dy Lutez, she'd guessed this for a tribunal on the gods' parts, for her old, cold murder and sin confessed to dy Cabon back in Casilchas. Feared that she was slated to be dragged though all that stale guilt yet again: Fetch a bucket of water for the drowning woman!
But now ... it seemed her self-involved expectations were mockingly thwarted. Not herself, but another, was the center of the god's attentions. Her lips puffed on a bitter laugh. And she was merely being... what? Tempted to meddle?
Tempted, certainly. The Bastard had plainly primed her with that salacious kiss of His. His questing tongue had sent a most cryptic message, but that part of it she had received clearly, body and mind.
What point, to wake that sleeping appetite here, now? What point ever? No dishes had been served up in tiny, backwater Valenda worth salivating over, even if the curse had not paralyzed her as much below the waist as above it. She was hardly to be faulted for failing her feminine duty to fall in love there. She tried to imagine dy Ferrej, or any other gentleman of the Provincara's entourage, as an object of desire, and snorted. Just as well. Anyway, a modest lady always kept her eyes downcast. She had been taught that rule by age eleven.