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.