A knock at his chamber door interrupted the lesson, and he called absently, “Yes?”
The door popped open; the crow flapped backward and fell away through the window. Cazaril leaned out a moment to watch its flight. It plummeted, then spread its wings with a snap and soared again, wheeling away upon some morning updraft rising along the ravine’s steep face.
“My lord dy Cazaril, th—” The voice froze abruptly. Cazaril pushed up from the windowsill and turned to find a shocked-looking page standing in his doorway. Cazaril realized with a cold flush of embarrassment that he had not yet donned his shirt.
“Yes, boy?” Without appearing to hurry, he reached casually for the tunic, shook it out again, and pulled it on. “What is it?” His drawl did not invite comment or query upon the year-old mess on his back.
The page swallowed and found his voice again. “My lord dy Cazaril, the Royesse Iselle bids you attend upon her in the green chamber immediately following breakfast.”
“Thank you,” said Cazaril coolly. He nodded in sober dismissal. The page scampered off.
The morning excursion for which Iselle demanded Cazaril’s escort turned out to be nothing farther afield than the promised tour of Orico’s menagerie. The roya himself was to conduct his sister; entering the green chamber, Cazaril found him dozing in a chair in his postbreakfast nap. Orico snorted awake and rubbed his forehead as if it ached. He brushed sticky crumbs from his broad tunic, gathered up a square of linen wrapping some packet, and led his sister, Betriz, and Cazaril out the castle gate and off across the gardens.
In the stable yard, they encountered Teidez’s morning hunting party forming up. Teidez had been begging for this treat practically since he’d arrived at the Zangre. Lord Dondo, it appeared, had organized the boy’s wish, and now led the group, which included half a dozen other courtiers, grooms and beaters, three braces of dogs, and Ser dy Sanda. Teidez, atop his black horse, saluted his sister and royal brother cheerfully.
“Lord Dondo says it’s likely too early to spot boar,” he told them, “as the leaves are not yet fallen down. But we might get lucky.” Teidez’s groom, following on his own horse, was loaded down with a veritable arsenal of weaponry just in case, including the new crossbow and boar spear. Iselle, who evidently hadn’t been invited, looked on with some envy.
Dy Sanda smiled in contentment, as much as he ever smiled, with this noble sport, as Lord Dondo whooped and guided the cavalcade out of the yard at a smart trot. Cazaril watched them ride off and tried to figure out what about the fine autumn picture they presented made him uneasy. It came to him that not one of the men surrounding Teidez was under thirty. None followed the boy for friendship, or even anticipated friendship; all were there for self-interest. If any of these courtiers had their wits about them, Cazaril decided, they ought to bring their sons to court now and turn them loose and let nature take its course. A vision not without its own perils, but…
Orico lumbered on around the stable block, the ladies and Cazaril following. They found the head groom Umegat, evidently forewarned, waiting decorously by the menagerie doors, open wide to the morning sun and breeze. He bowed his neatly braided head to his master and his guests.
“ ‘S Umegat,” said Orico to his sister, by way of introduction. “Runs this place for me. Roknari, but a good man anyway.”
Iselle controlled a visible twinge of alarm and inclined her head graciously. In passable court Roknari, albeit improperly in the grammatical mode of master to warrior rather than master to servant, she said, ~Blessings of the Holy Ones be upon you this day, Umegat.~
Umegat’s eyes widened, and his bow deepened. He returned a ~Blessings of the High Ones upon you too, m’hendi,~ in the purest accent of the Archipelago, in the polite grammatical form of slave to master.
Cazaril’s brows rose. Umegat was no Chalionese half-breed after all, it seemed. Cazaril wondered by what convoluted life’s chances he’d ended up here. Interest roused, he ventured, ~You are a long way from home, Umegat,~ in the mode of servant to lesser servant.
A little smile turned the groom’s lips. ~You have an ear, m’hendi. That is rare, in Chalion.~
~Lord dy Cazaril instructs me,~ Iselle supplied.
~Then you are well served, lady. But,~ turning to Cazaril, he shifted modes, now to that of slave to scholar, even more exquisitely polite than that of slave to master, ~Chalion is my home now, Wisdom.~
“Let us show my sister my creatures,” put in Orico, evidently growing bored with the bilingual amenities. He held up his linen napkin and grinned conspiratorially. “I stole a honeycomb for my bears from the breakfast table, and it will soak through soon if I don’t rid myself of it.”
Umegat smiled back and conducted them into the cool stone building.
The place was even more immaculate this morning than the other day, tidier by far than Orico’s banqueting halls. Orico excused himself and dodged aside at once into one of his bears’ cages. The bear woke up and sat up on his haunches; Orico lowered himself to his haunches on the gleaming straw, and the two regarded one another. Orico was very nearly the same shape as the bear, withal. He unwrapped his napkin and broke off a chunk of honeycomb, and the bear snuffled over and began licking his fingers with a long pink tongue. Iselle and Betriz exclaimed at the bear’s thick and beautiful fur, but made no move to join the roya in the cage.
Umegat directed them to the more obviously herbivorous goat-creatures, and this time the ladies did go into the stalls, to stroke the beasts and compliment them enviously on their big brown eyes and sweeping eyelashes. Umegat explained that they were called vellas, imported from somewhere beyond the Archipelago, and supplied carrots, which the ladies fed to the vellas with much giggling and mutual satisfaction. Iselle wiped the last carrot bits mixed with vella slime on her skirt, and they all followed Umegat toward the aviary. Orico, lingering with his bear, languidly waved them on without him.
A dark shape swooped from the sunlight into the stone-arched aisle and fetched up with a flap and a grumble on Cazaril’s shoulder; he nearly jumped out of his boots. He craned his neck to find it was his crow from his window this morning, judging by the ragged slot in its tail feathers. It flexed its clawed feet in his shoulder and cried, “Caz, Caz!”
Cazaril burst into laughter. “About time, you foolish bird! But it will do you no good now—I’m all out of bread.” He shrugged his shoulder, but the bird clung stubbornly, and cried, “Caz, Caz!” again, right in his ear, painfully loudly.
Betriz laughed, lips parted in amazement. “Who’s your friend, Lord Caz?”
“It came to my window this morning, and I attempted to teach it, um, a few words. I didn’t think I’d succeeded—”
“Caz, Caz!” the crow insisted.
“You should be so attentive to your Darthacan, my lady!” Cazaril finished. “Come, Ser dy Bird, away with you. I have no more bread. Go find yourself a stunned fish below the falls, or a nice smelly dead sheep, or something…shoo!” He dipped his shoulder, but the bird clung stubbornly. “They are most greedy birds, these castle crows. Country crows have to fly about and find their own dinners. These lazy creatures expect you to put it in their mouths.”
“Indeed,” said Umegat, with a sly smile, “the birds of the Zangre are veritable courtiers among crows.”
Cazaril swallowed a bark of laughter slightly too late and sneaked another look at the impeccable Roknari—ex-Roknari—groom. Well, if Umegat had worked here long, he’d had plenty of time to study courtiers. “This worship would be more flattering if you were a more savory bird. Shoo!” He pushed the crow from his shoulder, but it only flapped to the top of his head and dug its claws into his scalp. “Ow!”
“Cazaril!” the crow cried shrilly from this new perch.
“You must be a master teacher of tongues indeed, my lord dy Cazaril.” Umegat smiled more broadly. “I hear you,” he assured the crow. “If you will duck your head, my lord, I will endeavor to remove your passenger.”
Cazaril did so. Mur
muring something in Roknari, Umegat persuaded the bird onto his arm, carried it to the doors, and flung it into the air. It flapped away, cawing, to Cazaril’s relief, more ordinary caws.
They proceeded to the aviary, where Iselle found herself as popular among the brilliant little birds from the cages as Cazaril was with the ragged crow; they hopped upon her sleeve, and Umegat showed her how to coax them to take grains from between her teeth.
They turned next to the perch birds. Betriz admired a large bright green one with yellow breast feathers and a ruby throat. It clicked its thick yellow beak, wobbled from side to side, and stuck out a narrow black tongue.
“This is a fairly recent arrival,” Umegat told them. “I believe it has had a difficult and wandering life. Tame enough, but it’s taken time and patience to calm it down.”
“Does it speak?” asked Betriz.
“Yes,” said Umegat, “but only rude words. In Roknari, perhaps fortunately. I think it must have once been a sailor’s bird. March dy Jironal brought it back from the north this spring, as war booty.”
Reports and rumors of that inconclusive campaign had come to Valenda. Cazaril wondered if Umegat had ever been war booty—as he had been—and if that was how he’d first been brought to Chalion. He said dryly, “Pretty bird, but it seems a poor trade for three towns and control of a pass.”
“I believe Lord dy Jironal gained rather more movables than that,” Umegat said. “His baggage train, returning to Cardegoss, took an hour to file through the gates.”
“I’ve had to deal with slow mules like that, too,” murmured Cazaril, unimpressed. “Chalion lost more than dy Jironal gained on that ill-conceived venture.”
Iselle’s eyebrows bent. “Was it not a victory?”
“By what definition? We and the Roknari princedoms have been pushing and shoving over that border area for decades. It used to be good land—it’s now a waste. Orchards and olive groves and vineyards burned, farms abandoned, animals turned loose to go wild or starve—it’s peace, not war, that makes wealth for a country. War just transfers possession of the residue from the weaker to the stronger. Worse, what is bought with blood is sold for coin, and then stolen back again.” He brooded, and added bitterly, “Your grandfather Roya Fonsa bought Gotorget with the lives of his sons. It was sold by March dy Jironal for three hundred thousand royals. It’s a wondrous transmutation, where the blood of one man is turned into the money of another. Lead into gold is nothing to it.”
“Can there never be peace in the north?” asked Betriz, startled by his unusual vehemence.
Cazaril shrugged. “Not while there is so much profit in war. The Roknari princes play the same game. It is a universal corruption.”
“Winning the war would end it,” said Iselle thoughtfully.
“Now there’s a dream,” sighed Cazaril. “If the roya could sneak it past his nobles without their noticing they were losing their future livelihoods. But no. It’s just not possible. Chalion alone could not defeat all five princedoms, and even if by some miracle it did, it has no naval expertise to hold the coasts thereafter. If all the Quintarian royacies were to combine, and fight hard for a generation, some immensely strong and determined roya might push it through and unite the whole land. But the cost in men and nerve and money would be vast.”
Iselle said slowly, “Greater than the cost of this endless sucking drain of blood and virtue to the north? Done once—done right once—would be done for all time.”
“But there is none to do it. No man with the nerve and vision and will. The roya of Brajar is an aging drunkard who sports with his court ladies, the Fox of Ibra is tied down with civil strife, Chalion…” Cazaril hesitated, realizing his stirred emotions were luring him into impolitic frankness.
“Teidez,” Iselle began, and took a breath. “Maybe it will be Teidez’s gift, when he comes to full manhood.”
Not a gift Cazaril would wish on any man, and yet the boy did seem to have some nascent talents in that direction, if only his education in the next few years could bring them into sharp and directed focus.
“Conquest isn’t the only way to unite peoples,” Betriz pointed out. “There’s marriage.”
“Yes, but no one can marry three royacies and five princedoms,” Iselle said, wrinkling her nose. “Not all at once, anyway.”
The green bird, perhaps irritated at losing the attention of its audience, chose this moment to vent a remarkably lewd phrase in rude Roknari. Sailor’s bird, indeed—a galley-man’s bird, Cazaril judged. Umegat smiled dryly at Cazaril’s involuntary snort but raised his brows slightly as Betriz and Iselle clamped their lips shut and turned a suffused pink, caught each other’s gazes, and nearly lost their gravity. Smoothly, he reached for a hood and popped it over the bird’s head. “Good night, my green friend,” he told it. “I think you are not quite ready for polite society, here. Perhaps Lord dy Cazaril should stop in and teach you court Roknari too, eh?”
Cazaril’s thought that Umegat seemed perfectly capable of teaching court Roknari all by himself was interrupted when a surprisingly brisk step at the door of the aviary proved to be Orico, wiping bear spittle on his trousers and smiling. Cazaril decided the castle warder’s comment that first day was right: his menagerie did seem to be a consolation to the roya. His eye was clear, and color brightened his face again, visibly improved from the soggy exhaustion he’d evidenced immediately after breakfast.
“You must come see my cats,” he told the ladies. They all followed him into the stone aisle, where he proudly showed off cages containing a pair of fine golden cats with tufted ears from the mountains of south Chalion, and a rare blue-eyed albino mountain cat of the same breed with striking black ear tufts. This end of the aisle also held a cage containing a pair of what Umegat named Archipelago sand foxes, looking like skinny, half-sized wolves, but with enormous triangular ears and cynical expressions.
With a flourish, Orico turned finally to his obvious favorite, the leopard. Let out on its silver chain, it rubbed itself around the roya’s legs and made odd little growly noises. Cazaril held his breath as, encouraged by her brother, Iselle knelt to pet it, her face right next to those powerful jaws. Those round, pellucid amber eyes looked anything but friendly to him, but their lids did half close in evident enjoyment, and the broad brick-colored nose quivered as Iselle scratched the beast vigorously under the chin, and ran her spread fingers through its fabulous spotted coat. When Cazaril knelt, however, its growl took what seemed to his ear a decidedly hostile edge, and its distant amber stare encouraged no such liberties. Cazaril prudently kept his hands to himself.
The roya choosing to linger to consult with his head groom, Cazaril walked his ladies back to the Zangre, as they argued amiably over which had been the most interesting beast in the menagerie.
“What did you think the most curious creature there?” Betriz charged him.
Cazaril took a moment before replying, but in the end decided on the truth. “Umegat.”
Her mouth opened to object to this supposed levity, but then closed again as Iselle cast him a sharp look. A thoughtful silence descended, which reigned all the way to the castle doors.
THE SHORTENING OF THE DAYLIGHT RUNNING ON INTO autumn was felt to be no loss by the inhabitants of the Zangre, for the lengthening nights continued to be made brilliant by candlelight, feasting, and fêtes. The courtiers took turns outdoing one another providing the entertainments, freely spending money and wit. Teidez and Iselle were dazzled, Iselle, fortunately, not totally; with the aid of Cazaril’s undervoiced running commentary, she began to look for hidden meanings and messages, watch for intents, calculate expenditures and expectations.
Teidez, as nearly as Cazaril could tell, swallowed it all down whole. Signs of indigestion showed themselves. Teidez and dy Sanda began to clash more and more openly, as dy Sanda fought a losing battle to maintain the disciplines he’d imposed on the boy in the Provincara’s careful household. Even Iselle began to worry about the heightening tensions between her bro
ther and his tutor, as Cazaril quickly deduced when Betriz cornered him one morning, apparently casually, in a window nook overlooking the confluence of the rivers and half the hinterland of Cardegoss.
After a few remarks upon the weather, which was seasonable, and the hunting, which was too, she swerved abruptly to the matter that brought her to him, lowering her voice and asking, “What was that dreadful row between Teidez and poor dy Sanda in your corridor last night? We could hear the uproar through the windows and through the floor.”
“Um…” Five gods, how was he to handle this one? Maidens. He half wished Iselle had sent Nan dy Vrit. Well, surely that sensible widow was in on whatever distaff discussions went on overhead. Yes, and better to be blunt than misunderstood. And far better to be blunt with Betriz than with Iselle herself. Betriz, no child, and most of all not Teidez’s only sister, could decide what was fit to pass on to Iselle’s ears better than he could. “Dondo dy Jironal brought Teidez a drab for his bed last night. Dy Sanda threw her back out. Teidez was infuriated.” Infuriated, embarrassed, possibly secretly relieved, and, later in the evening, sick on wine. Ah, the glorious courtly life.
“Oh,” said Betriz. He’d shocked her a little, but not excessively, he was relieved to see. “Oh.” She fell into a thoughtful silence for a few moments, staring out over the rolling golden plains beyond the river and its widening valley. The harvest was almost all in. She bit her lower lip and looked back at him in narrow-eyed concern. “It’s not…it’s surely not…there is something very odd in the spectacle of a forty-year-old man like Lord Dondo hanging on a fourteen-year-old boy’s sleeve.”
“To hang on a boy? Odd indeed. To hang on a royse, his future roya, future dispenser of position, wealth, preferment, military opportunity—well, there you have it. Grant you, if Dondo were to let go his space on that sleeve it would instantly be seized by three other men. It’s the…the manner that’s the matter.”