The Curse of Chalion

Lord dy Rinal, seated across from Cazaril, twisted his lips at the half-empty hall and remarked, "Everyone's deserting. Off to their country estates, if they have 'em, before the snow flies. It's going to be a gloomy Father's Day celebration, I warrant. Only the tailors and seamstresses are busy, furbishing up mourning garb."

Cazaril reached through the ghost-smudge that was hovering next to his plate and washed down the last bite of his repast with a gulp of well-watered wine. Four or five of the revenants had trailed after him to the hall and now clustered about him like cold children crowding a hearth. He had chosen somber clothing himself tonight, automatically; he wondered if he should trouble himself to obtain the full correct lavenders and blacks such as dy Rinal, always fashionable, now sported. Would the abomination locked in his belly take it as hypocrisy, or as a gesture of respect? Would it even know? New-riven from its body, how much of its repulsive nature did Dondo's soul now retain? These weathered old spirits seemed to watch him from the outside; was Dondo watching him from the inside? He grinned briefly, as an alternative to startling poor dy Rinal with a fit of screaming. He managed a politely inquiring, "Do you stay or go?"

"I go, I think. I'll ride down with Marchess dy Heron as far as Heron itself, and then cut over the lower passes to home. The old lady might be glad enough of another sword in her party that she'd even invite me to stay." He took a swallow of wine and lowered his voice. "If not even the Bastard would take Lord Dondo off our hands, you realize he must still be about somewhere. One trusts he'll just haunt Jironal's palace where he died, but really, he could be anywhere in Cardegoss. And he was vicious enough before he was murdered; he's bound to be vengeful now. Slain the night before his wedding, gods!"

Cazaril made a neutral noise.

"The chancellor seems set on calling it death magic, but I shouldn't wonder if it was poison after all. No way of telling, now the body's burned, I suppose. Convenient for somebody, that."

"But he was surrounded by his friends. Surely no one could have administered—were you there?"

Dy Rinal grimaced. "After Lady Pig? No. Thanks be to all her squeals, I was not present at that butchering." Dy Rinal glanced around, as if afraid a ghost with a grudge might be sneaking up on him even now. That there were half a dozen within his arm's reach was evidently not apparent to him. Cazaril brushed one away from his face, trying not to let his eyes focus on what, to his companion, must seem empty air.

Ser dy Maroc, the roya's wardrobe-master, strolled up to their table saying, "Dy Rinal! Have you heard the news from Ibra?" Belatedly, he observed Cazaril leaning with elbows on the board opposite and hesitated, flushing slightly.

Cazaril smiled sourly. "One trusts you're getting your gossip from Ibra from more reliable sources these days, Maroc?"

Dy Maroc stiffened. "If the Chancellery's own courier be one, yes. He came in pell-mell while my head tailor was refitting Orico's mourning garb, that he had to let out by four fingerbreadths—anyway, it's official. The Heir of Ibra died last week, all suddenly, of the coughing fever in South Ibra. His faction has collapsed, and rushes to make treaty with the old Fox, or save their lives by sacrificing each other. The war in South Ibra is ended."

"Well!" Dy Rinal sat up and stroked his beard. "Do we call that good news, or bad? Good for poor Ibra, the gods know. But our Orico has chosen the losing side again."

Dy Maroc nodded. "The Fox is rumored to be most wroth with Chalion, for stirring the pot and keeping it boiling, not that the Heir needed help putting wood on that fire."

"Perhaps the old roya's taste for strife shall be buried with his firstborn," said Cazaril, not too hopefully.

"So the Fox has a new Heir, that child of his age—what was the boy's name?" said dy Rinal.

"Royse Bergon," Cazaril supplied.

"Aye," said dy Maroc. "A young one indeed. And the Fox could drop at any moment, leaving an untried boy on the throne."

"Not so untried as all that," said Cazaril. "He's seen the prosecution of one siege and the breaking of another, riding in his late mother's train, and survived a civil war. And one would think a son of the Fox could not be stupid."

"The first one was," said dy Rinal, unassailably. "To leave his supporters in such naked disarray."

"One cannot blame death of the coughing fever on a lack of wit," said Cazaril.

"Assuming it really was the coughing fever," said dy Rinal, pursing his lips in new suspicion.

"What, d'you think the Fox would poison his own son?" said dy Maroc.

"His agents, man."

"Well, then, he might have done it sooner, and saved Ibra a world of woe—"