The Curse of Chalion

"Ah," said Mendenal uneasily. He managed a smile, and took polite leave.

Royesse Iselle stepped into the corridor and glanced up and down it. She spied Cazaril and motioned him to her.

He bowed. "Royesse?"

She, too, lowered her voice; everyone here seemed to speak in hushed tones. "There is talk of an amputation. Can you—would you be willing—to help hold him down, if it chances so? I think you are familiar with the procedure?"

"Indeed, Royesse." Cazaril swallowed. Nightmare memories of bad moments in field hospitals flitted through his mind. He had never been able to decide if the men who tried to take it bravely or the men whose minds broke in terror were the hardest for their helpers to endure. Better by far the men who were unconscious to start with. "Tell the physicians I am at their service, and Lord Teidez's."

Cazaril could hear from the antechamber where he leaned against the wall to wait just when the proposal was floated to Teidez. The boy was going to be of the second category, it seemed. He cried, and bellowed that he would not be made a cripple by traitors and idiots, and threw things. His rising hysteria was only calmed when a second physician opined that the infection was not gangrene after all—Cazaril's nose agreed—but rather, blood poisoning, and that amputation would do more harm than good now. Treatment was reduced to a mere lancing, although from Teidez's yells and struggles it might as well have been an amputation. Despite the draining of the wound, Teidez's fever soared; servants brought buckets of cold water to make him a bath in a copper tub in the sitting room, then the physicians had to wrestle him into it.

Between physicians, acolytes, and servants, they seemed to have enough hands for these practical tasks, and Cazaril withdrew for a time to his own office on the floor above. There he diverted his mind by writing tart letters to those town councils late with their royally mandated payments to the royesse's household, which was all of them. They had sent letters of excuse claiming poor crops, banditry, plague, evil weather, and cheating tax gatherers. Six towns' worth of troubles; Cazaril wondered if Orico had pulled a fast one with his betrothal gift and dumped the six worst towns on his rent rolls onto his sister and Dondo, or whether all of Chalion was in such disarray.

Iselle and Betriz came in, looking weary and strained.

"My brother is more ill than I have ever seen him," Iselle confided to Cazaril. "We are going to set up my private altar and pray before dinner. I'm wondering if we should perhaps fast as well."

"I think what may be needed here are not others' prayers, but Teidez's himself; and not for health, but for forgiveness."

Iselle shook her head. "He refuses to pray at all. He says it's not his fault, but Dondo's, which is certainly true up to a point... . He cries he never intended to hurt Orico, and they are slanderers who say so."

"Is anyone saying so?"

Betriz put in, "No one says it to the royesse's face. But there are strange rumors among the servants, Nan says."

Iselle's frown deepened. "Cazaril... could it be?"

Cazaril leaned his elbows on his table and rubbed the ache between his brows. "I think... not on Teidez's part. I believe him when he says it was Dondo's idea. Dondo, now, of him I would believe anything. Think it through from his point of view. He marries Teidez's sister, then arranges for Teidez to ascend the throne while still a minor. He knew from watching his brother Martou just how much power a man may wield sitting in a roya's pocket. Grant you, I don't know how he intended to rid himself of Martou, but I am certain Dondo meant to be the next chancellor, perhaps regent, of Chalion. Maybe even roya of Chalion, depending on what evil chances he could arrange for Teidez."

Iselle caught her lower lip in her teeth. "And here I thought you had only saved me." She touched Cazaril briefly on the shoulder and passed on into her chambers.

Cazaril accompanied Iselle and Betriz on their predinner visit to Orico. Orico, though no better, was no worse. They found him arrayed in fresh linens, sitting up in bed, and being read to by Sara. The roya spoke hopefully of an improvement in his right eye, for he thought he could now see shapes moving. Cazaril thought the physician's diagnosis of dropsy all too likely, for Orico's gross flesh was swollen even more grossly; the roya's thumbprint, placed upon the tight fat of his face, stayed pale and visible for a long time. Iselle downplayed the alarming reports of Teidez's infection to Orico, but in the antechamber on the way out spoke frankly to Sara. Sara's lips tightened; she made little comment to Teidez's sister, but Cazaril thought that here at least was one who did not pray for the bewildered brutal boy.