The Curse of Chalion

Cazaril closed his teeth, hiding his tremble of outrage. "If you decline to believe in my probity, my lord, you might at least reflect upon Royesse Iselle's future, and believe I still possess the wits the gods gave me. Today she has a household. Another day, it may be some royacy, or a princedom."

"Indeed, think you so?" Dondo sat back with a strange grin, then laughed aloud. "Ah, poor Cazaril. If a man neglects his bird in the hand for the flock he sees in the tree, he's very like to end with no bird at all. How clever is that?" He set the ring coyly down on the stone between them.

Cazaril opened both his hands and held them out palm up in front of his chest in a gesture of release. He returned them firmly to his knees, and said with undeceptive mildness, "Save your treasure, my lord, to buy yourself a man with a lower price. I'm sure you can find one."

Dondo scooped his ring back up and frowned fiercely at Cazaril. "You haven't changed. Still the same sanctimonious prig. You and that fool dy Sanda are much alike. No wonder, I suppose, considering that old woman in Valenda who chose you both." He rose and stalked indoors, shoving the ring back on his finger. The two men waiting glanced across curiously at Cazaril and turned to follow.

Cazaril sighed, and wondered if his moment of furious satisfaction had been bought at too high a price. It might have been wiser to take the bribe and leave Lord Dondo calm, happy in the belief that he'd bought another man, one just like himself, easy to understand, certain of control. Feeling very tired, he pushed himself to his feet and went back inside to mount the stairs to his bedchamber.

He was just putting his key in his lock when dy Sanda passed him in the corridor, yawning. They exchanged cordial-enough murmurs of greeting.

"Stay a moment, dy Sanda."

Dy Sanda glanced back over his shoulder. "Castillar?"

"Are you careful to keep your door locked these days, and your key about your person?"

Dy Sanda's brows rose, and he turned. "I have a trunk with a good, stout lock, that serves for all I have to guard."

"That's not enough. You need to block your whole room."

"So that nothing can be stolen? I have little enough that—"

"No. So that nothing stolen can be placed therein."

Dy Sanda's lips parted; he stood a moment, as this sank in, and raised his eyes to meet Cazaril's. "Oh," he said at last. He gave Cazaril a slow nod, almost a bow. "Thank you, Castillar. I hadn't thought of that."

Cazaril returned the nod, and went inside.

Cazaril sat in his bedchamber with a profligacy of candles and the classic Brajaran verse romance The Legend of the Green Tree, and sighed in contentment. The Zangre's library had been famous in the days of Fonsa the Wise but neglected ever since—this volume, judging by the dust, hadn't been pulled off the shelves since the end of Fonsa's reign. But it was the luxury of enough candles to make reading late at night a pleasure and not a strain, as much as Behar's versifying, that gave his heart joy. And a little guilt—the charges for good wax candles upon Iselle's household accounts were going to add up after a time, and look a trifle odd. Behar's thundering cadences echoing in his head, he moistened his finger and turned a page.

Behar's stanzas weren't the only things around here thundering and echoing. He glanced upward, as rapid thumps and scrapes and the muffled sounds of laughter and calling voices penetrated from the ceiling. Well, enforcing reasonable bedtimes in Iselle's household was Nan dy Vrit's job, not his, thank the gods. He returned his eye to the poet's theologically symbolic visions, and ignored the clatter, till the pig squealed shrilly.

Even the great Behar could not compete with that mystery. His lips drawing back in a grin, Cazaril set the volume down on his coverlet and swung his still-trousered legs out of bed, fastened his tunic, wriggled his feet into his shoes, and picked up the candle with the glass chimney to light his way up the back stairs.

He met Dondo dy Jironal coming down. Dondo was dressed in his usual courtier's attire, blue brocade tunic and linen-woolen trousers, though his white vest-cloak swung from his hand, along with his sword in its scabbard and sword belt. His face was set and flushed. Cazaril's mouth opened to give some polite greeting, but his words died on his lips at Dondo's murderous glare. Dondo stormed on past him without a word.

Cazaril swung into the upstairs corridor to find all its wall sconces lit and an inexplicable array of people gathered. Not only Betriz, Iselle, and Nan dy Vrit, but Lord dy Rinal, one of his friends and another lady, and Ser dy Sanda were all crowded around laughing. They scattered to the walls as Teidez and a page blasted through their midst, in hot pursuit of a scrubbed and beribboned young pig trailing a length of scarf. The page tackled the animal at Cazaril's feet, and Teidez hooted triumph.

"In the bag, in the bag!" dy Sanda called.