“Error, Caz? Have you thought about that?”
Cazaril sighed. “I had nineteen months to think of it, Palli. I rubbed every possibility as thin as an old coin in my brain. I thought of it till I was sick to death of the thinking, and called it done. It’s done.”
This time, Palli brushed the hint firmly aside. “Do you think it was the Roknari taking revenge upon you, by hiding you from us and saying you died?”
“That’s one.” Except that I saw the list.
“Or did someone leave you off the list on purpose?” Palli persisted.
The list was in Martou dy Jironal’s own hand. “That was my final conclusion.”
Palli’s breath blew out. “Vile! A vile betrayal, after what we suffered—dammit, Caz! When I get up to court, I am going to tell March dy Jironal of this. He’s the most powerful lord in Chalion, the gods know. Together, I wager we can get to the bottom of—”
“No!” Cazaril lurched upright from his cushions, terrified. “Don’t, Palli! Don’t even tell dy Jironal I exist! Don’t discuss it, don’t mention me—if the world thinks I’m dead, so much the better. If I’d realized that was so, I would have stayed in Ibra. Just . . . drop it.”
Palli stared. “But . . . Valenda is hardly the end of the world. Of course people will learn you’re alive.”
“It’s a quiet, peaceful place. I’m not bothering anyone here.”
Other men were as brave, some were stronger; it was Palli’s wits that had made him Cazaril’s favorite lieutenant at Gotorget. It only needed the one thread to start him unraveling . . . his eyes narrowed, glinting in the soft candlelight. “Dy Jironal? Himself? Five gods, what did you ever do to him?”
Cazaril shifted uncomfortably. “I think it was not personal. I think it was just a little . . . favor, for someone. A little, easy favor.”
“Then two men must know the truth. Gods, Caz, which two?”
Palli would go nosing in—Cazaril must either tell him nothing—too late already—or else enough to stop him. Nothing halfway, Palli’s brain would keep plucking at the puzzle—it was doing so even now.
“Who would hate you so? You were always the most agreeable man—you were downright famous for refusing duels, and leaving the bullroarers to look like the fools they were—for making peace, for wheedling out the most amazing treaty terms, for avoiding faction—Bastard’s hell, you didn’t even make bets on games! Little, easy favor! What could possibly drive such an implacable cruel hatred of you?”
Cazaril rubbed his brow, which was beginning to ache, and not from tonight’s wine. “Fear. I think.”
Palli’s lips screwed up in astonishment.
“And if it becomes known you know, they’ll fear you too. It’s not something I wish to see fall on you, Palli. I want you to steer clear.”
“If it’s that degree of fear, the fact that we’ve even talked together will make me suspect. Their fear, plus my ignorance—gods, Caz! Don’t send me blindfolded into battle!”
“I want never to send any man into battle again!” The fierceness in his own voice took even Cazaril by surprise. Palli’s eyes widened. But the solution, the way to use Palli’s own ravenous curiosity against him, came to Cazaril in that moment. “If I tell you what I know, and how I know it, will you give me your word—your word!—to drop it? Don’t pursue it, don’t mention it, don’t mention me—no dark hints, no dancing about the issue—”
“What, as you are doing now?” said Palli dryly.
Cazaril grunted, half in amusement, half in pain. “Just so.”
Palli sat back against the wall, and rubbed his lips. “Merchant,” he said amiably. “To make me buy a pig in a bag, without ever seeing the animal.”
“Oink,” murmured Cazaril.
“I only want to buy the squeal, y’know—damn, all right. I never knew you to lead us over wet ground unknowing, nor into ambush. I’ll trust your judgment—to the exact extent you trust my discretion. My word on that.”
A neat counterthrust. Cazaril could not but admire it. He sighed. “Very well.” He sat silent for a moment after this—welcome—dual surrender, marshaling his thoughts. Where to begin? Well, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t gone over it, and over it, and over it in his mind. A most polished tale, for all it had never crossed his lips before.
“It’s quickly enough told. I first met Dondo dy Jironal to speak to four, no, it’s five now, five years ago. I was in Guarida’s train in that little border war against the mad Roknari prince Olus—you know, the fellow who made a habit of burying his enemies up to the waist in excrement and burning them alive?—the one who was murdered about a year later by his own bodyguards?”
“Oh, yes. I’d heard of him. Ended head down in the excrement, they say.”
“There are several versions. But he was still in control at that time. Lord dy Guarida had cornered Olus’s army—well, rabble—up in the hills at the edge of his princedom. Lord Dondo and I were sent as the envoys, under the flag of parley, to deliver an ultimatum to Olus and arrange the terms and ransoms. Things went . . . badly, in the conference, and Olus decided he only required one messenger to return his defiance to the assembled lords of Chalion. So he stood us up, Dondo and me, in his tent surrounded by four of his monster guards with swords and gave us a choice. Whichever of us would cut off the other’s head would be permitted to ride with it back to our lines. If we both refused, we both would die, and he’d return both our heads by catapult.”
Palli opened his mouth, but the only comment he managed was, “Ah.”
Cazaril took a breath. “I was given the first chance. I refused the sword. Olus whispered to me, in this weird oily voice, ‘You cannot win this game, Lord Cazaril.’ I said, ‘I know, m’hendi. But I can make you lose it.’ He was quiet for a little, but then he just laughed. Then he turned round and gave the chance to Dondo, who was green as a corpse by then . . .”
Palli stirred, but didn’t interrupt; he signaled Cazaril mutely to go on.
“One of the guards knocked me to my knees and stretched my head, by the hair, over a footstool. Dondo—took his cut.”
“On the guard’s arm?” said Palli eagerly.
Cazaril hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “But Olus, at the last moment, thrust his sword between us, and Dondo’s sword came down on its flat, and slid—” Cazaril could still hear the sharp scraping skree of metal on metal, in his memory’s ear. “I ended up with a bruise across the back of my neck that was black for a month. Two of the other guards wrestled the sword back from Dondo. And then we were both mounted up on our horses and sent back to dy Guarida’s camp. As my hands were being tied to my saddle, Olus came up to me again, and whispered, ‘Now we shall see who loses.’
“It was a very silent ride back. Until we were in sight of camp. And Dondo turned and looked at me for the first time, and said, ‘If you ever tell this tale, I will kill you.’ And I said, ‘Don’t worry, Lord Dondo. I only tell amusing tales at table.’ I should have just sworn silence. I know better now, and yet . . . maybe even that would not have been enough.”
“He owes you his life!”
Cazaril shook his head, and looked away. “I’ve seen his soul stripped naked. I doubt he can ever forgive me for that. Well, I didn’t speak of it, of course, and he let it lie. I thought that was the end of it. But then came Gotorget, and then came . . . well. What came after Gotorget. And now I am doubly damned. If Dondo ever learns, if he ever realizes that I know exactly how I came to be sold to the galleys, what do you think my life will be worth then? But if I say nothing, do nothing, nothing to remind him . . . perhaps he has forgotten, by now. I just want to be left alone, in this quiet place. He surely has more pressing enemies these days.” He turned his face back to Palli, and said tensely, “Don’t you ever mention me to either of the Jironals. Ever. You never heard this story. You scarcely know me. If you ever loved me, Palli, leave it be.”