The Curse of Chalion

Three scabbed, parallel grooves ran in a spiral partway around the boy's right leg. In themselves, they did not appear deep or dangerous, but the flesh around them was so swollen that the skin was shiny and silvery. Translucent pink drainage and yellow pus oozed from their edges. Cazaril forced himself to keep his expression even as he studied the hot red streaks climbing past the boy's knee and winding up the inside of his thigh. Teidez's eyes were glazed. He jerked back his head as Cazaril reached for him. "Don't touch me!"

"Be still!" Cazaril commanded in a low voice. Teidez's forehead, beneath Cazaril's wrist, was scorching.

He glanced up at the sallow-faced secretary, watching with a frown. "How long has he been feverish?"

"Just this morning, I believe."

"When did his physician last see this?"

"He would not have a physician, Lord Cazaril. He threw a chair at me when I tried to help him, and bandaged it himself."

"And you let him?" Cazaril's voice made the secretary jump.

The man shrugged uneasily. "He would have it so."

Teidez grumbled, "Some people obey me. I'll remember who, too, later." He glowered up at Cazaril through half-lowered lashes, and stuck out his lower lip at his sister.

"He's taken an infection. I'll see that a Temple physician is sent in to him at once."

Teidez, disgruntled, wriggled back down under his covers. "Can I go back to sleep now? If you don't mind. And draw the curtain, the light hurts my eyes."

"Yes, stay abed," Cazaril told him, and withdrew.

Iselle followed him into the antechamber, lowering her voice. "It's not right, is it?"

"No. It's not. Good observation, Royesse. Your judgment was correct."

She gave him a satisfied nod, and he bowed himself out and made for the end stairs. By Nan dy Vrit's shadowed face, she at least understood just how not-right it was. All Cazaril could think of, as he hastened down the stairs and back across the stones of the courtyard toward Ias's Tower, was how very seldom he'd seen any man, no matter how young or strong, survive an amputation that high upon the thigh. His stride lengthened.

By good luck, Cazaril found dy Jironal at once, in the Chancellery. He was just sealing a saddlebag and dispatching a courier with it.

"How are the roads?" dy Jironal asked the fellow, who was typically lean and wiry and wore the Chancellery's tabard over an odd assortment of winter woolens.

"Muddy, m'lord. It will be dangerous to ride after dark."

"Well, do your best," dy Jironal sighed, and clapped him on the shoulder. The man saluted and made his way out past Cazaril.

Dy Jironal scowled at his new visitor. "Cazaril."

"My lord." Cazaril offered a fractional bow and entered.

Dy Jironal seated himself on the edge of his desk, and folded his arms. "Your attempt to hide behind the Daughter's Order in its plot to unseat me is doomed to fail, you know," he said conversationally. "I intend to see that its failure will be miserable."

Impatiently, Cazaril waved this aside. He'd have been more surprised had dy Jironal not had an ear in the order's councils. "You have much worse troubles this morning than anything I can offer you, my lord."

Dy Jironal's eyes widened in surprise; his head tilted in an attitude of sudden attention. "Oh?"

"What did Teidez's wound look like when you saw it?"

"What wound? He showed me no wound."

"On his right leg—he was scratched by Orico's leopard, apparently, while he was killing the poor beast. In truth, the marks didn't look deep, but they've taken an infection. His skin burns. And you know how a poisoned wound sometimes throws out feverish marks upon the skin?"

"Aye," said dy Jironal uneasily.

"Teidez's run from ankle to groin. They look like a bloody conflagration."

Dy Jironal swore.

"I advise you pull that troop of useless physicians off of Orico for a moment and send them across to Teidez's chambers. Or you could lose two royal puppets in one week."

Dy Jironal's glare met Cazaril's like flint on steel, but after one fierce inhalation he nodded and shifted to his feet. Cazaril followed him out. Corrupted with greed and familial pride dy Jironal might be, but he wasn't incompetent. Cazaril could see why Orico might have chosen to endure much, in exchange for that.

After assuring himself that dy Jironal was climbing the stairs to Orico's chambers with due haste, Cazaril turned back down them. He'd had no word from the temple hospital since last night; he wanted to check again on Umegat. He made his way out the Zangre gates past the ill-fated stable block. A little to his surprise, he spotted Umegat's tongueless undergroom climbing the hill toward him. The man waved his thumbless hand when he saw Cazaril, and hurried his step.

He arrived breathless and smiling. His face was marked with livid bruises, red-purple around one eye, from the futile fight in the menagerie, and his broken nose was still swollen, its lacerated edge dark and scabbed. But his eyes were shining in their wrecked matrix; he almost danced up to Cazaril.