The Curse of Chalion

Pointedly ignoring him, she pulled up a chair and plunked down into it, folding her arms. "If it's a serious accusation against the most trusted servant of my household, it is very much for my ears. Cazaril, what is this about?"

Cazaril gave her a slight bow. "A slander has apparently been circulated, by persons not yet named, that the scars on my back were punishment for a crime."

"Last fall," dy Maroc put in nervously. "In Ibra."

By Betriz's widening stare and caught breath, she had obtained a good close view of the ropy mess as she'd followed Iselle around Cazaril. Ser dy Sanda's lips too pursed in a wince.

"May I put my tunic back on, sire?" Cazaril added stiffly.

"Yes, yes." Orico waved a hasty assent.

"The nature of the crime, Royesse," dy Jironal put in smoothly, "is such as to cast very serious doubts on whether the man should be a trusted servant of your, or indeed, any lady's household."

"What, rape?" said Iselle scornfully. "Cazaril? That is the most absurd lie I have ever heard."

"And yet," said dy Jironal, "there are the flogging scars."

"The gift," said Cazaril through his teeth, "of a Roknari oar-master, in return for a certain ill-considered defiance. Last fall, and off the coast of Ibra, that much is true."

"Plausible, and yet... odd," said dy Jironal in a judicious tone. "The cruelties of the galleys are legendary, but one would not think a competent oar-master would damage a slave past use."

Cazaril half smiled. "I provoked him."

"How so, Cazaril?" asked Orico, leaning back and squeezing the fat of his chin with one hand.

"Wrapped my oar-chain around his throat and did my best to strangle him. I almost succeeded, too. But they pulled me off him a trifle too soon."

"Dear gods," said the roya. "Were you trying to commit suicide?"

"I... am not quite sure. I'd thought I was past fury, but... I had been given a new benchmate, an Ibran boy, maybe fifteen years old. Kidnapped, he said, and I believed him. You could tell he was of good family, soft, well-spoken, not used to rough places—he blistered dreadfully in the sun, and his hands bled on the oars. Scared, defiant, ashamed... he said his name was Danni, but he never told me his surname. The oar-master made to use him after a manner forbidden to Roknari, and Danni struck out at him. Before I could stop him. It was insanely foolish, but the boy didn't realize... . I thought—well, I wasn't thinking very clearly, but I thought if I struck harder I could distract the oar-master from retaliating upon him."

"By retaliating against you instead?" said Betriz wonderingly.

Cazaril shrugged. He'd kneed the oar-master hard enough in the groin, before wrapping the chain around his neck, to assure he wouldn't be amorous again for a week, but a week would have passed soon enough, and then what? "It was a futile gesture. Would have been futile, but for the chance of the Ibran naval flotilla crossing our bows the next morning, and rescuing us all."

Dy Sanda said encouragingly, "You have witnesses, then. Quite a large number of them, it sounds like. The boy, the galley slaves, the Ibran sailors... what became of the boy, after?"

"I don't know. I lay ill in the Temple Hospital of the Mother's Mercy in Zagosur for, for a while, and everyone was scattered and gone by the time I, um, left."

"A very heroic tale," said dy Jironal, in a dry tone well calculated to remind his listeners that this was Cazaril's version. He frowned judiciously and glanced around the assembled company, his gaze lingering for a moment upon dy Sanda, and the outraged Iselle. "Still... I suppose you might ask the royesse to give you a month's leave to ride to Ibra, and locate some of these, ah, conveniently scattered witnesses. If you can."

Leave his ladies unguarded for a month, here? And would he survive the trip? Or be slain and buried in a shallow grave in the woods two hours' ride out of Cardegoss, leaving the court to construe his guilt from his supposed flight? Betriz pressed her hand to whitened lips, but her glare was wholly for dy Jironal. Here, at least, was one who believed Cazaril's word and not his back. He stood a little straighter.

"No," he said at last. "I am slandered. My sworn word stands against hearsay. Unless you have some better support than castle gossip, I defy the lie. Or—where did you have the tale? Have you traced it to its source? Who accuses me—is it you, dy Maroc?" He frowned at the courtier.

"Explain it, dy Maroc," dy Jironal invited, with a careless wave.

De Maroc took a breath. "I had it from an Ibran silk merchant that I dealt with for the roya's wardrobe—he recognized the castillar, he said, from the flogging block in Zagosur, and was very shocked to see him here. He said it was an ugly case—that the castillar had ravished the daughter of a man who took him in and gave him shelter, and he remembered it very well, therefore, because it was so vile."

Cazaril scratched his beard. "Are you sure he didn't simply mistake me for another man?"