The Curse of Chalion

"Take off your shirt!" The royse was practically dancing, circling around him again; Cazaril felt dizzy. He glanced at the Fox, who looked as baffled as everyone else, but waved his hand curiously, endorsing the royse's peculiar demand. Confused and frightened, Cazaril complied, popping the frogs of his tunic and slipping it off together with his vest-cloak, and folding the garments over his arm. He set his jaw, trying to stand with dignity, to bear whatever humiliation came next.

"You're Caz! You're Caz!" Bergon cried. His frown had changed to a demented grin. Ye gods, the royse was mad, and after all this pelting gallop over plain and mountain, unfit for Iselle after all—

"Why, yes, so my friends call me—" Cazaril's words were choked off as the royse abruptly flung his arms around him, and nearly lifted him off his feet.

"Father," Bergon cried joyously, "this is the man! This is the man!"

"What," Cazaril began, and then, by some trick of angle and shift of voice, he knew. Cazaril's own gape turned to grin. The boy has grown! Roll him back a year in time and four inches in height, erase the beard-shadow, shave the head, add a peck of puppy fat and a blistering sunburn... "Five gods," he breathed. "Danni? Danni!"

The royse grabbed his hands and kissed them. "Where did you go? I fell sick for a week after I was brought home, and when I finally set men to look for you, you'd disappeared. I found other men from the ship, but not you, and none knew where you'd gone."

"I was ill also, in the Mother's hospital here in Zagosur. Then I, um, walked home to Chalion."

"Here! Right here all the time! I shall burst. Ah! But I sent men to the hospitals—oh, how did they miss you there? I thought you must have died of your injuries, they were so fearsome."

"I was sure he must have died," said the Fox slowly, watching this play with unreadable eyes. "Not to have come to collect the very great debt my House owed to him."

"I did not know... who you were, Royse Bergon."

The Fox's gray eyebrows shot up. "Truly?"

"No, Father," Bergon confirmed eagerly. "I told no one who I was. I used the nickname Mama used to call me by when I was little. It seemed to me more unsafe to claim my rank than to pass anonymously." He added to Cazaril, "When my late brother's bravos kidnapped me, they did not tell the Roknari captain who I was. They meant me to die on the galley, I think."

"The secrecy was foolish, Royse," chided Cazaril. "The Roknari would surely have set you aside for ransom."

"Yes, a great ransom, and political concessions wrung from my father, too, no doubt, if I'd allowed myself to be made hostage in my own name." Bergon's jaw tightened. "No. I would not hand myself to them to play that game."

"So," said the Fox in an odd voice, staring up at Cazaril, "you did not interpose your body to save the royse of Ibra from defilement, but merely to save some random boy."

"Random slave boy. My lord." Cazaril's lips twisted, as he watched the Fox trying to work out just what this made Cazaril, hero or fool.

"I wonder at your wits."

"I'm sure I was half-witted by then," Cazaril conceded amiably. "I'd been on the galleys since I was sold as a prisoner of war after the fall of Gotorget."

The Fox's eyes narrowed. "Oh. So you're that Cazaril, eh?"

Cazaril essayed him a small bow, wondering what he had heard of that fruitless campaign, and shook out his tunic. Bergon hastened to help him don it again. Cazaril found himself the object of stunned stares from every man in the room, including Ferda and Foix. His tilted grin barely kept back bubbling laughter, though underneath the laughter seethed a new terror that he could scarcely name. How long have I been walking down this road?

He pulled out the last letter in his packet, and swept a deeper bow to Royse Bergon. "As the document your respected father holds attests, I come as spokesman for a proud and beautiful lady, and I come not just to him, but to you. The Heiress of Chalion begs your hand in marriage." He handed the sealed missive to the startled Bergon. "In this, I will let the Royesse Iselle speak for herself, which she is most fit to do by virtue of her singular intellect, her natural right, and her holy purpose. After that, I will have much else to tell you, Royse."

"I'm eager to hear you, Lord Cazaril." Bergon, after a taut glance around the chamber, took himself off to a window-door, where he popped the letter's seal and read it at once, his lips softening with wonder.

Amazement, too, touched the Fox's lips, though it rendered them anything but soft. Cazaril had no doubt he'd put the man's wits to the gallop. For his own wits he now prayed for wings.