The Curse Of Chalion Part 7

The Provincara's eyes narrowed; she did not take the bait. Betriz, however, did. "Oh, what?"

"It was when I was riding for the provincar of Guarida, during a skirmish with the Roknari prince Olus. Olus's troops came raiding over the border under the cover of night, and a storm. I was told off to evacuate the ladies of dy Guarida's household before the town was encircled. Near dawn, after riding half the night, we crossed a high freshet. One of his provincara's ladies-in-waiting was swept off when her horse fell, and was carried away by the force of the waters, together with the page who went after her. By the time I'd got my horse turned around, they were out of sight...We found the bodies downstream next morning. The river was not that deep, but she panicked, not having any idea how to swim. A little training might have turned a fatal accident into merely a frightening one, and three lives saved."

"Three lives?" said Iselle. "The lady, the page..."

"She had been with child."

"Oh."

A very daunted silence fell.

The Provincara rubbed her chin, and eyed Cazaril. "A true story, Castillar?"

"Yes," Cazaril sighed. Her flesh had been bruised and battered, cold, blue-tinged, inert as clay beneath his clutching fingers, her sodden clothes heavy, but not as heavy as his heart. "I had to tell her husband."

"Huh," grunted dy Ferrej. The table's most reliable raconteur, he did not try to top this tale.

"It's not an experience I ever wish to repeat," added Cazaril.

The Provincara snorted and looked away. After a moment, she said, "My granddaughter cannot go sporting about naked in the river like an eel."

Iselle sat up. "But suppose we wore, oh, linen s.h.i.+fts."

"It's true, if one needed to swim in an emergency, one would most likely have clothes still on," Cazaril said helpfully.

Betriz added wistfully under her breath, "And we could cool off twice. Once when we swam, and once when we sat about drying out."

"Cannot some lady of the household instruct her?" Cazaril coaxed.

"They do not swim either," said the Provincara firmly.

Betriz nodded confirmation. "They just wade." She glanced up. "Could you you teach us how to swim, Lord Caz?" teach us how to swim, Lord Caz?"

Iselle clapped her hands. "Oh, yes!"

"I...uh..." Cazaril stammered. On the other hand...in that that company, he might keep his s.h.i.+rt on without comment. "I suppose so...if your ladies went along." He glanced across at the Provincara. "And if your grandmother would permit me." company, he might keep his s.h.i.+rt on without comment. "I suppose so...if your ladies went along." He glanced across at the Provincara. "And if your grandmother would permit me."

After a long silence, the Provincara growled grudgingly, "Mind you don't all catch chills."

Iselle and Betriz, prudently, suppressed hoots of triumph, but they cast Cazaril sparkling glances of grat.i.tude. He wondered if they thought he had made up the story of the night-ride drowning.

THE LESSONS BEGAN THAT AFTERNOON, WITH CAZARIL standing in the middle of the river trying to persuade two rather stiff young women that they would not drown instantly if they got their hair wet. His fear that he had overdone the dire safety warnings gradually pa.s.sed as the women at length relaxed and learned to let the waters buoy them up. They were naturally more buoyant than Cazaril, though his months at the Provincara's table had driven a deal of the wolf-gauntness from his bearded face. standing in the middle of the river trying to persuade two rather stiff young women that they would not drown instantly if they got their hair wet. His fear that he had overdone the dire safety warnings gradually pa.s.sed as the women at length relaxed and learned to let the waters buoy them up. They were naturally more buoyant than Cazaril, though his months at the Provincara's table had driven a deal of the wolf-gauntness from his bearded face.

His patience proved justified. By the end of the summer, they were splas.h.i.+ng and diving like otters in the drought-shrunken stream. Cazaril had merely to sit in the shallows in water up to his waist and call occasional suggestions.

His choice of vantage had only partly to do with staying cool. The Provincara was right, he had to allow-swimming was was lewd. And loose linen s.h.i.+fts, thoroughly wetted down and clinging to lithe young bodies, made fair mockery of the modesty they attempted to preserve, a stunning effect he carefully did not point out to his two blithe charges. Worse, the effect cut two ways. Wet linen trews clinging to lewd. And loose linen s.h.i.+fts, thoroughly wetted down and clinging to lithe young bodies, made fair mockery of the modesty they attempted to preserve, a stunning effect he carefully did not point out to his two blithe charges. Worse, the effect cut two ways. Wet linen trews clinging to his his loins revealed a state of mind-um, body-um, loins revealed a state of mind-um, body-um, recovering health recovering health-that he earnestly prayed they would not notice. Iselle didn't seem to, anyway. He was not entirely sure about Betriz. Their middle-aged lady-in-waiting Nan dy Vrit, who declined the lessons but waded about in the shallows fully dressed with her skirts hoisted to her calves, missed nothing in the play, and was clearly hard-pressed to control her snickers. Charitably, she seemed to grant him his good faith, and did not laugh at him out loud, nor tattle on him to the Provincara. At least...he didn't think she did.

Cazaril was uncomfortably conscious that his awareness of Betriz was increasing day by day. Not yet to the point of slipping anonymous bad poetry under her door, thank the G.o.ds for the shreds of his sanity. Playing the lute under her window was, perhaps fortunately, no longer within his gift. And yet...in the long summer quiet of Valenda, he had begun to dare to think of a life beyond the turning of an hourgla.s.s.

Betriz did smile at him-that was true, he did not delude himself. And she was kind. But she smiled at and was kind to her horse, too. Her honest friendly courtesy was hardly ground enough to build a dream mansion upon, let alone bring bed and linens and try to move in. Still...she did did smile at him. smile at him.

He stifled the idea repeatedly, but it kept popping up-along with other things, alas, especially during swimming lessons. But he'd sworn off ambition-he didn't have to make a fool of himself anymore, dammit. His embarra.s.sing arousal might be a sign of returning strength, but what good did it do him? He was as landless and penniless as in his days here as a page, and with far fewer hopes. He was mad to entertain fantasies of either l.u.s.t or love, and yet...Betriz's father was a landless man of good blood, living a life of service. Surely he could not despise a like sojourner.

Not despise Cazaril, no-dy Ferrej was too wise for that. But he was also wise enough to know his daughter's beauty and connection with the royesse was a dowry that could bring her something rather better in the way of a husband than fortuneless Cazaril, or even the local petty gentry's sons who served the Provincara's household as pages now. Betriz clearly considered the boys to be annoying puppies anyway. But some of them had elder brothers, heirs of their modest estates...

Today he sank down in the water to his chin and pretended not to watch through his eyelashes as Betriz scrambled up onto a rock, translucent linen dripping, black hair streaming down over her trembling curves. She stretched her arms to the sun before belly-flopping forward to splash Iselle, who ducked and shrieked and splashed her back. The days were shortening now, the nights were cooling, and likewise the afternoons. The festival of the ascent of the Son of Autumn was at hand. It had been too cool to swim all last week-only a few days were likely left warm enough to make these private wet river excursions tolerable. Fast gallops, and the hunt, would soon entice his ladies to drier delights. And his good sense would return to him like a strayed dog. Wouldn't it?

THE SLANTING LIGHT AND CHILLING AIR DROVE THE lingering swimming party from the water to dry a while on the stony banks. Cazaril was so drenched in mellow ease that he didn't even make them conduct their idle chitchat in Darthacan or Roknari. At last he pulled on his heavy riding trousers and boots-good new boots, a gift from the Provincara-and his sword belt. He tightened the browsing horses' girths and removed their hobbles, and helped the ladies mount. Reluctantly, with many backward glances at the sylvan river glade falling behind, the little cavalcade wound up the hill to the castle. lingering swimming party from the water to dry a while on the stony banks. Cazaril was so drenched in mellow ease that he didn't even make them conduct their idle chitchat in Darthacan or Roknari. At last he pulled on his heavy riding trousers and boots-good new boots, a gift from the Provincara-and his sword belt. He tightened the browsing horses' girths and removed their hobbles, and helped the ladies mount. Reluctantly, with many backward glances at the sylvan river glade falling behind, the little cavalcade wound up the hill to the castle.

In a spurt of recklessness, Cazaril pressed his horse forward to match pace with Betriz's. She glanced across at him, quick fugitive dimple winking. Was it want of courage, or want of wits that turned his tongue to wood in his mouth? Both, he decided. He and the Lady Betriz attended Iselle together daily. If some ponderous attempt of his at dalliance should prove unwelcome, might it damage the precious ease that had grown between them in the royesse's service? No-he must, he would say something-but her horse broke into a trot at the sight of the castle gate, and the moment was lost.

As they entered the courtyard, the sc.r.a.pe of their horses' hooves echoing hollowly on the cobbles, Teidez burst from a side door, crying "Iselle! Iselle!"

Cazaril's hand leapt to his sword hilt in shock-the boy's tunic and trousers were bespattered with blood-then fell away again at the sight of the dusty and grimy dy Sanda trudging along behind his charge. Teidez's gory appearance was merely the result of an afternoon training session at Valenda's butcher's yard. It wasn't horror that drove his excited cries, but rapture. The round face he turned up to his sister was s.h.i.+ning with joy.

"Iselle, the most wonderful thing has happened! Guess, guess!"

"How am I to guess-" she began, laughing.

Impatiently he waved this away; his news tumbled from his lips. "A courier from Roya Orico just arrived. You and I are ordered to attend upon him this fall at court in Cardegoss! And Mother and Grandmama are not not invited! Iselle, we're going to escape from Valenda!" invited! Iselle, we're going to escape from Valenda!"

"We're going to the Zangre Zangre?" Iselle whooped, and slid from her saddle to grab her brother's reeking hands and whirl with him around the courtyard. Betriz leaned on her saddlebow and watched, her lips parted in thrilled delight.

Their lady-in-waiting pursed her lips in much less delight. Cazaril caught Ser dy Sanda's eye. The royse's tutor's mouth was set in a grim frown.

Cazaril's stomach lurched, as the coins of conclusion dropped. The Royesse Iselle was ordered to court; therefore her little household would accompany her to Cardegoss. Including her handmaiden Lady Betriz.

And her secretary.

7.

The royse and royesse's caravan approached Cardegoss from the south road. They struggled up a rise to find the whole of the plain between the cradling mountains rolling out below their feet. approached Cardegoss from the south road. They struggled up a rise to find the whole of the plain between the cradling mountains rolling out below their feet.

Cazaril's nostrils flared as he drew in the sharp wind. Cold rain last night had scoured the air clean. Tumbling banks of slate-blue clouds shredded away to the east, echoing the lines of the wrinkled blue-gray ranges hugging the horizon. Light from the west thrust across the plains like a sword stroke. Rising up on its great rock jutting out above the angle where two streams met, dominating the rivers, the plains, the mountain pa.s.ses, and the eyes of all beholders, the Zangre caught the light and blazed like molten gold against the dark retreating cloud banks. Its ochre stone towers were crowned and capped with slate roofs the color of the scudding clouds, like an array of iron helmets upon a valiant band of soldiers. Favored seat of the royas of Chalion for generations, the Zangre appeared from this vantage all fortress, no palace, as dedicated to the business of war as any soldier-brother sworn to the holy orders of the G.o.ds.

Royse Teidez urged his black horse forward next to Cazaril's bay and stared eagerly at their goal, his face lit with a kind of awed avarice. Hunger for the promise of a larger life, free of the careful constraints of mothers and grandmothers, Cazaril supposed, certainly. But Teidez would have to be much duller than he appeared not to be wondering right now if this luminous miracle of stone could be his, someday. Why, indeed, had the boy been called to court, if Orico, despairing at last of ever getting heirs of his own body, was not meaning to groom him as his successor?

Iselle halted her dappled gray and stared nearly as eagerly as Teidez. "Strange. I remembered it as larger, somehow."

"Wait till we get closer," Cazaril advised dryly.

Ser dy Sanda, in the van, motioned them forward, and the whole train of riders and pack mules started down the muddy road once more: the two royal youths, their secretary-guardians, Lady Betriz, servants, grooms, armed outriders in the green-and-black livery of Baocia, extra horses, Snowflake-who might at this point more aptly be named Mudpot-and all their very considerable baggage. Cazaril, veteran of a number of hair-tearingly aggravating n.o.ble ladies' processions, regarded the progress of the convoy as a wonder of dispatch. It had taken only five days to ride from Valenda, four and a half, really. Royesse Iselle, ably backed by Betriz, had driven her subhousehold with verve and efficiency. Not one of the journey's inevitable delays could be laid to her feminine caprice.

In fact both Teidez and Iselle had pushed their entourage to its best speed from the moment they'd ridden out of Valenda and galloped ahead to outdistance Ista's heart-wrenching wails, audible even over the battlements. Iselle had clapped her hands over her ears and steered her horse with her knees till she'd escaped the echo of her mother's extravagant grief.

The news that her children were ordered from her had thrown the dowager royina, if not into madness outright, into deep distraction and despair. She had wept, and prayed, and argued, and, at length, gone silent, a relief of sorts. Dy Sanda had confided to Cazaril how she'd cornered him and tried to bribe him into flying with Teidez, where and how being unclear. He described her as gibbering, clutching, barely short of foam-flecked.

She had cornered Cazaril, too, in his chamber packing his saddlebags the night before the departure. Their conversation went rather differently; or at least, whatever it had been, it wasn't gibbering.

She had regarded him for a long, silent, and unnerving moment before saying abruptly, "Are you afraid, Cazaril?"

Cazaril considered his reply, and finally answered simply and truthfully, "Yes, my lady."

"Dy Sanda is a fool. You, at least, are not."

Not knowing what to say to this, Cazaril inclined his head politely.

She inhaled, her eyes gone huge, and said, "Protect Iselle. If ever you loved me, or your honor, protect Iselle. Swear it, Cazaril!"

"I swear."

Her eyes searched him, but rather to his surprise she did not demand more elaborate protestations, or rea.s.suring repet.i.tions.

"From what shall I protect her?" Cazaril asked cautiously. "What do you fear, Lady Ista?"

She stood silent in the candlelight.

Cazaril recalled Palli's effective entreaty. "Lady, please do not send me blindfolded into battle!"

Her lips puffed, as from a blow to the stomach; but then she shook her head in despair, whirled away, and rushed from the room. Her attendant, obviously worried to the point of exasperation, had blown out her breath and followed her.

Despite the memory of Ista's infectious agitation, Cazaril found his spirits lifted from their mire of dread by the young people's excitement as their goal neared. The road met the river that flowed out of Cardegoss, and ran alongside it as they descended into a wooded area. At length, Cardegoss's second stream joined the main. A chill draft coursed through the shaded valley. On the side of the river opposite the road, three hundred feet of cliff face erupted from the ground and soared aloft. Here and there, little trees clung desperately to crevices, and ferns spilled down over the rocks.

Iselle paused to stare up, and up. Cazaril reined his horse in beside hers. From here, one could not even see the beginnings of the human masons' puny defensive additions decorating the top of this natural fortress wall.

"Oh," said Iselle.

"My," added Betriz, joining them craning in their necks.

"The Zangre," said Cazaril, "has never in its history been taken by a.s.sault."

"I see," breathed Betriz.

A few floating yellow leaves, promise of autumn to come, whirled away down the dark stream. The party pressed their horses forward, climbing up out of the valley to where a great stone arch, leading to one of the seven gates of the city, spanned the stream. Cardegoss shared the stream-carved plateau with the fortress. The town ramparts flared back along the tops of the ravines like the shape of a boat with the Zangre at its prow, then turned inward in a long wall forming the stern.

In the clear light of this crisp afternoon, the city failed signally to look sinister. Markets, glimpsed down side streets, were bright with food and flowers, thronged with men and women. Bakers and bankers, weavers and tailors and jewelers and saddlers, together with such trades and crafts that were not required by their need for running water to be down by the riversides, offered their wares. The royal company rode through the misnamed Temple Square, which had five sides, one for each of the big regional mother-houses of the G.o.ds' holy orders. Divines, acolytes, and dedicats strode along, looking more harried and bureaucratic than ascetic. In the square's vast paved center, the familiar cloverleaf-and-tower shape of Cardegoss's Temple of the Holy Family bulked, impressively more extensive than the homey little version in Valenda.

To Teidez's ill-concealed impatience, Iselle demanded a stop here, and sent Cazaril scurrying into the temple's echoing inner courtyard to lay an offering of coins upon the altar of the Lady of Spring in grat.i.tude for their safe journey. An acolyte took charge of it with thanks and stared curiously at Cazaril; Cazaril mumbled a brief distracted prayer and hurried back out to mount again.

Climbing the long shallow slope toward the Zangre, they pa.s.sed through streets where houses of the n.o.bility, built of dressed stone and with elaborate iron grilles protecting windows and gates, loomed shoulder to shoulder, high and square. The dowager royina had lived in one such, for a time in her early widowhood. Iselle excitedly identified three possible candidates for her childhood home, until, overcome with confusion, she made Cazaril promise to determine later which had been hers.

At last they rode up to the great gate of the Zangre itself. A natural cleft across the plateau opened just before it into a sharp shadowed crevice, more daunting than any moat. On the far side, huge boulders formed the lowest course of stones in the walls; irregular, but fitting so tightly a knife blade could not have slid between them. Atop them, fine Roknari work, its delicate traceries of geometric decoration seeming sugar rather than stone. Atop that, yet more crisp-cut stone, towering higher and higher as if men competed with the G.o.ds who had thrown up the great rock the whole edifice stood upon. The Zangre was the only castle Cazaril had ever been in where he suffered whirling vertigo standing at the bottom looking up up.

A horn sounded from above, and soldiers in the livery of Roya Orico saluted as they rode across the drawbridge and through the narrow archway into the courtyard. Lady Betriz clutched her reins and stared around with her lips parted. The courtyard was dominated by a huge high rectangular tower, newest and crispest, the addition of the reign of Roya Ias and Lord dy Lutez. Cazaril had always wondered if its great size was a measure of the men's strength...or their fears. A little beyond it, almost as high, a round tower loomed at one corner of the main block. Its slate roof was tumbled in, and its tall top ragged and broken.

"Dear G.o.ds," said Betriz, staring at the half ruin, "what happened there? Why don't they repair it?"

"Ah," said Cazaril, thrown into tutorial mode, considerably more for his own rea.s.surance than Betriz's. "That's the tower of Roya Fonsa the Wise." Known more commonly, after his death, as Fonsa the Fairly-Wise. "They say he used to walk upon it all night, trying to read the will of the G.o.ds and the fate of Chalion in the stars. On the night he worked his miracle of death magic upon the Golden General, a great storm and gouts of lightning threw down the roof, and set a fire that didn't burn out until morning despite the torrents of rain."

When the Roknari had first invaded from the sea, they had overrun most of Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar in their first violent burst, even past Cardegoss, to the very feet of the southern mountain ranges. Darthaca itself had been threatened by their advance parties. But from the ashes of the weak Old Kingdoms and the harsh cradle of the hills new men had emerged, fighting for generations to regain what had been lost in those first few years. Warrior-thieves, they made an economy of raiding; n.o.ble fortunes were not made, but stolen. Turnabout, for the Roknari idea of tax collection was a column of soldiers taking all in their winding path at sword's point, like locusts in arms. Bribe and counterbribe turned the columns back, until Chalion was become an odd interlocking dance of counting armies and armed accountants. But over time, the Roknari were pushed back north toward the sea again, leaving behind as legacy a residue of castles and brutality. At length the invaders were reduced to the five squabbling princedoms hugging the north coast.

The Golden General, the Lion of Roknar, had looked to reverse the ebb of his history. By war, guile, and marriage he had in ten blazing years united all five princedoms for almost the first time since the Roknari had landed. Barely thirty, he'd gathered a great tide of men into his hands, preparing to sweep south once more, declaring he would wipe the Quintarian heretics and the wors.h.i.+p of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d from the face of the land with fire and sword. Desperate and disunited, Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar were losing against him on every front.

More ordinary forms of a.s.sa.s.sination failing, death magic was tried upon the golden genius a dozen times and more, without result. Fonsa the Wise, from deep study, reasoned that the Golden General must be the chosen of one of the G.o.ds; no sacrifice less than that of a king could balance his thundering destiny. Fonsa had lost five sons and heirs one after another in the wars to the north. Ias, his last and youngest, was locked in bitter struggle with the Roknari for the final mountain pa.s.ses blocking their invasion routes. One stormy night, taking only a divine of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who was in his confidence and a loyal young page, Fonsa had mounted his tower, locking its door behind him...

The courtiers of Chalion had pulled three charred bodies from the rubble the following morning; only the differing heights allowed them to tell divine from page from roya. Shocked and terrified, the trembling court had awaited its fate. The courier from Cardegoss, galloping north with the news of loss and woe, met the courier galloping south from Ias with news of victory. Funeral and coronation were celebrated simultaneously within the Zangre's walls.

Cazaril stared around at those walls now. "When Royse-now Roya-Ias returned from the war," he went on to Betriz, "he ordered the lower windows and doors of his dead father's tower bricked up, and proclaimed that no one should enter it again."

A dark, flapping shape launched itself from the tower's top, and Betriz squeaked and ducked.

"Crows have nested in it ever since," Cazaril noted, tilting his head back to watch the black silhouette wheel against the intense blue sky. "I believe it's the same flock of sacred crows the divines of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d feed in the temple yard. Intelligent birds. The acolytes make pets of them and teach them to speak."

Iselle, who had drawn closer as Cazaril had discoursed upon her royal grandfather's fate, asked, "What do they say?"

"Not much," Cazaril admitted, with a quick grin at her. "I never saw one that had a vocabulary of more than three squawks. Although some of the acolytes insisted they were saying more."

Warned by the outrider dy Sanda had sent on ahead, a swarm of grooms and servants rushed out to a.s.sist the arriving guests. The Zangre's castle warder, with his own hands, positioned a mounting bench for Royesse Iselle. Perhaps thrown into consciousness of her dignity by this gentleman's bending gray head, she used the step for a change, parting from her horse with ladylike grace. Teidez tossed his reins to a bowing groom and stared about with s.h.i.+ning eyes. The warder made rapid conference with dy Sanda and Cazaril of a dozen practical details, from stabling the horses and grooms to-Cazaril grinned briefly-stabling the royse and royesse.

The warder escorted the royal children to their rooms in the left wing of the main block, followed by a parade of servants lugging the baggage. Teidez and his entourage were given half a floor; Iselle and her ladies, the floor above them. Cazaril was a.s.signed a small room on the gentlemen's floor, but at the very end. He wondered if he was expected to guard the staircase.

"Rest and refresh yourselves," the warder said. "The roya and royina will receive you at a celebratory banquet this evening, attended by all the court." A rush of servants bringing wash water, clean linens, bread, fruit, pastries, cheese, and wine a.s.sured the visitors from Valenda that they were not abandoned to starve between now and then.

"Where are my royal brother and sister-in-law?" Iselle asked the warder.

The warder made her a little bow. "The royina is resting. The roya is visiting his menagerie, which is a great consolation to him."

"I'd like to see it," she said, a little wistfully. "He has often written me of it."

"Tell him so. He'll like to show it to you," the warder a.s.sured her with a smile.

The ladies' party was soon deeply involved in a frantic turning out of luggage to select garments for the banquet, an exercise that quite clearly did not require Cazaril's inexpert a.s.sistance. He directed the servant to place his trunk in his narrow room and depart, dropped his saddlebags on his bed, and rooted through them to find the letter to Orico the Provincara had strictly charged him to deliver, into the roya's hand and no other, at his earliest possible moment upon arrival. He paused only to wash the road dirt from his hands and spare a quick glance out his window. The deep ravine on this side of the castle seemed to plunge straight down below his sill. A dizzying glint of water from the stream was just visible through the treetops far below.

Cazaril only lost his way once on the way to the menagerie, which was outside the walls and across the gardens, an adjunct of the stables. If nothing else he could identify it by the sharp, acrid smell of strange manures neither human nor equine. Cazaril stared into an arched aisle of the stone building, his eyes adjusting to its cool shade, and diffidently entered.

A couple of former stalls were converted to cages for a pair of wonderfully glossy black bears. One was asleep on a pile of clean golden straw; the other stared up at him, lifting its muzzle and sniffing hopefully as Cazaril pa.s.sed. On the other side of the aisle stalls housed some very strange beasts that Cazaril could not even put a name to, like tall leggy goats, but with long curving necks, mild and liquid eyes, and thick soft fur. In a room to one side, a dozen large, brilliantly colored birds on perches preened and muttered, and other tiny, equally bright ones twittered and flitted in cages lining the wall. Across from the aviary, in an open bay, he found human occupants at last: a neat groom in the roya's livery, and a fat man sitting cross-legged on a table, holding a leopard by its jeweled collar. Cazaril gasped and froze as the man ducked his head right next to the great cat's open jaws.

The man was currying the beast vigorously. A cloud of yellow and black hairs rose from the pair as the leopard writhed on the table in what Cazaril recognized, after a blink, as feline ecstasy. Cazaril's eye was so locked by the leopard, it took him another moment to recognize the man as Roya Orico.

The dozen years since Cazaril had last glimpsed him had not been kind. Orico had never been a handsome man, even in the vigor of his youth. He was a little below average in height, with a short nose unfortunately broken in a riding accident in his teens and now looking rather like a squashed mushroom in the middle of his face. His hair had been auburn and curly. It was now roan, still curly but much thinner. His hair was the only thing about him that was thinner; his body was grossly broadened. His face was pale and puffy, with baggy eyelids. He chirped at his spotted cat, who rubbed its head against the roya's tunic, shedding more hairs, then licked the brocade vigorously with a tongue the size of a washcloth, evidently pursuing a large gravy stain that had trailed down over the roya's impressive paunch. The roya's sleeves were rolled up, and half a dozen scabbed scratches scored his arms. The great cat caught a bare arm, and held it in its yellow teeth briefly, but did not close its jaws. Cazaril unwound his clutching fingers from his sword hilt, and cleared his throat.

As the roya turned his head, Cazaril fell to one knee. "Sire, I bear you respectful greetings from the Dowager Provincara of Baocia, and this her letter." He held out the paper, and added, just in case no one had mentioned it to him yet, "Royse Teidez and Royesse Iselle are arrived safely, sire."