“Five gods, Palli, forgive me. I did not mean to make you a donkey for my confidences, to carry them safely away.” Or perhaps he had, for Palli would be going away tomorrow, after all. “They make a motley menagerie to burden you with. I’m sorry.”
Palli waved away his apology as if batting a stinging fly. His lips moved; he swallowed, and managed, “Are you sure it wasn’t just sunstroke?”
Cazaril chuckled. “Oh, I had the sunstroke, too, of course. But if it doesn’t kill you, sunstroke passes off in a day or two. This lasted . . . months.” Until the last incident with that terrified defiant Ibran boy, and Cazaril’s resultant final flogging. “We slaves—”
“Stop that!” cried Palli, running his hands through his hair.
“Stop what?” asked Cazaril in puzzlement.
“Stop saying that. We slaves. You are a lord of Chalion!”
Cazaril’s smile twisted. He said gently, “We lords, at our oars, then? We sweating, pissing, swearing, grunting gentlemen? I think not, Palli. On the galleys we were not lords or men. We were men or animals, and which proved which had no relation I ever saw to birth or blood. The greatest soul I ever met there had been a tanner, and I would kiss his feet right now with joy to learn he yet lived. We slaves, we lords, we fools, we men and women, we mortals, we toys of the gods—all the same thing, Palli. They are all the same to me now.”
After a long, indrawn breath, Palli changed the subject abruptly to the little matters of managing his escort from the Daughter’s military order. Cazaril found himself comparing useful tricks for treating leather rot and thrush infections in horses’ hooves. Soon thereafter Palli retired—or fled—for the night. An orderly retreat, but Cazaril recognized its nature all the same.
Cazaril lay down with his pains and his memories. Despite the feast and the wine, sleep was a long time coming. Fear might be his friend, if that wasn’t just bluff and bluster for Palli’s sake, but it was clear the dy Jironal brothers were not. The Roknari reported you’d died of a fever was a lie outright, and, cleverly, quite uncheckable by now. Well, he was surely sheltered here in quiet Valenda.
He hoped he’d cautioned Palli sufficiently to walk warily at the court in Cardegoss and not put a foot in a pile of old manure unawares. Cazaril rolled over in the darkness and sent up a whispered prayer to the Lady of Spring for Palli’s safety. And to all the gods and the Bastard, too, for the deliverance of all upon the sea tonight.
Chapter 6
At the Temple pageant celebrating the advent of summer, Iselle was not invited to reprise her role of the Lady of Spring because that part was traditionally taken by a woman new-wed. A very shy and demure young bride handed off the throne of the reigning god’s avatar to an equally well-behaved matron heavy with child. Cazaril saw out of the corner of his eye the divine of the Holy Family heave a sigh of relief as the ceremony concluded, this time, without any spiritual surprises.
Life slowed. Cazaril’s pupils sighed and yawned in the stuffy schoolroom as the afternoon sun baked the stones of the keep, and so did their teacher; one sweaty hour he abruptly surrendered and canceled for the season all classes after the noon nuncheon. As Betriz had said, the Royina Ista did seem to do better as the days lengthened and softened. She came more often to the family’s meals and sat almost every afternoon with her lady attendants in the shade of the gnarled fruit trees at the end of the Provincara’s flower garden. She was not, however, permitted by her guardians to climb to the dizzy, breezy perches upon the battlements favored by Iselle and Betriz to escape both the heat and the disapproval of various aging persons disinclined to mount stairs.
Driven from his own bedchamber by its dog-breath closeness on a hazy hot day following an unusually heavy night’s rain, Cazaril ventured into the garden seeking a more comfortable perch himself. The book under his arm was one of the few in the castle’s meager library he had not previously read, not that Ordol’s The Fivefold Pathway of the Souclass="underline" On the True Methods of Quintarian Theology was exactly one of his passions. Perhaps its leaves, fluttering loosely in his lap, would make his probable nap look more scholarly to passersby. He rounded the rose arbor and halted as he discovered the royina, accompanied by one of her ladies with an embroidery frame, occupying his intended bench. As the women looked up he dodged a couple of delirious bees and made an apologetic bow to them for his unintended intrusion.
“Stay, Castillar dy . . . Cazaril, is it?” murmured Ista, as he turned to withdraw. “How does my daughter go on in her new studies?”
“Very well, my lady,” said Cazaril, turning back and ducking his head. “She is very quick at her arithmetic and geometry, and very, um, persistent in her Darthacan.”
“Good,” said Ista. “That’s good.” She stared away briefly across the sun-bleached garden.
The companion bent over her frame to tie off a thread. Lady Ista did not embroider. Cazaril had heard it whispered by a maidservant that she and her ladies had worked for half a year upon an elaborate altar cloth for the Temple. Just as the last stitches were set, the royina had suddenly seized it and burned it in the fireplace of her chamber when her women had left her alone for a moment. True tale or not, her hands held no needle today, but only a rose.
Cazaril searched her face for deeper recognition. “I wondered . . . I have meant to ask you, my lady, if you remembered me from the days I served your noble father as a page here. A score of years ago, now, so it would be no wonder if you had forgotten me.” He ventured a smile. “I had no beard then.” Helpfully, he pressed his hand over the lower half of his face.
Ista smiled back, but her brows drew down in an effort of recognition that was clearly futile. “I’m sorry. My late father had many pages, over the years.”
“Indeed, he was a great lord. Well, no matter.” Cazaril shifted his book from hand to hand to hide his disappointment, and smiled more apologetically. He feared her nonrecall had nothing to do with her nervous state. He had more likely simply never registered upon her in the first place, an eager young woman looking forward and upward, not down or back.
The royina’s companion, hunting in her color box, murmured, “Drat,” and glanced up in appraisal at Cazaril. “My lord dy Cazaril,” she said, smiling invitingly. “If it would be no trouble to you, might you stay and keep my lady good company while I run up to my room and find my dark green silk?”
“No trouble at all, lady,” said Cazaril automatically. “That is, um . . .” He glanced at Ista, who gazed back at him levelly, with an unsettling tinge of irony. Well, it wasn’t as though Ista were given to shrieking and raving. Even the tears he had sometimes seen in her eyes welled silently. He gave the companion a little half bow as she rose; she seized him by the arm and took him a little way around the arbor.
She stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “All will be well. Just don’t mention Lord dy Lutez. And stay by her, till I return. If she starts going on again about old dy Lutez, just . . . don’t leave her.” She darted off.
Cazaril considered this hazard.
The brilliant Lord dy Lutez had been for thirty years the late Roya Ias’s closest advisor: boyhood friend, brother in arms, boon companion. Over time Ias had loaded him with every honor that was his to command, making him provincar of two districts, chancellor of Chalion, marshal of his household troops, and master of the rich military order of the Son—all the better to control and compel the rest, men murmured. It had been whispered by enemies and admirers alike that dy Lutez was roya in Chalion in all but name. And Ias his royina . . .