Lois Bujold: The Curse of Chalion

His brow twitched, and he gave her a little bow. "Then you might meditate, Royesse, on what honor a captain can claim, who drags his followers into an error when he knows he will himself escape the punishment."

The amber-haired girl's wide lips twisted at this. After a long glance up under her lashes, she, too, dropped him a fraction of a curtsey, before both girls escaped further chastisement by dodging indoors. The man in black heaved a sigh. The waiting woman, laboring after them, cast him a nod of thanks.

Even without these cues, Cazaril could have identified the man as the castle warder by the clink of keys at his silver-studded belt, and the chain of office around his neck. He rose at once as the man approached him, and essayed a cursedly awkward bow, pulled short by his adhesions. "Ser dy Ferrej? My name is Lupe dy Cazaril. I beg an audience of the Dowager Provincara, if... if it is her pleasure." His voice faltered under the warder's frown.

"I do not know you, sir," said the warder.

"By the gods' grace, the Provincara may remember me. I was once a page, here"—he gestured around rather blindly—"in this household. When the old provincar was alive." The closest thing to a home he had left, he supposed. Cazaril was unutterably weary of being a stranger everywhere.

The gray brows rose. "I will inquire if the Provincara will see you."

"That's all I ask." All he dared ask. He sank back to his bench, and wound his fingers together, as the warder stumped back into the main keep.

After several miserable minutes of suspense, stared at sidelong by passing servants, Cazaril looked up at the warder's return. Dy Ferrej eyed him with bemusement.

"Her Grace the Provincara grants you an interview. Follow me."

His body had stiffened, sitting in the gathering chill; Cazaril stumbled a little, and cursed his stumble, as he followed the warder indoors. He scarcely needed a guide. The plan of the place came back to him, tumbling through his memory with every turning. Through this hall, across those blue-and-yellow-patterned tiles, up this stair and that one, through a whitewashed inner chamber, and then the room on the western wall she'd always favored for sitting in this time of day, with the best light for her seamstresses, or for reading. He had to duck his head a little through its low door, as he'd never had to before; it seemed the only change. But not a change in the door.

"Here is the man as you bade, your grace," the warder announced Cazaril neutrally, declining to either endorse or deny his claimed identity.

The Dowager Provincara was seated in a wide wooden chair, made soft for her aging bones with cushions. She wore a sober dark green gown suitable to her high-ranked widowhood, but declined a widow's cap, choosing instead to have her graying hair braided up around her head in two knots and twined with green ribbons, locked with jeweled clasps. She had a lady companion almost as old as herself seated by her side, a widow also, judging by the garb of a lay dedicat of the Temple that she wore. The companion clutched her needlework and regarded Cazaril with an untrusting frown.

Praying his body would not betray him now with some twitch or stumble, Cazaril levered himself down onto one knee before her chair and bowed his head in respectful greeting. Her clothes were scented with lavender, and a dry old-woman smell. He looked up, searching her face for some sign of recognition. If she did not know him now, then no one he would become in truth, and swiftly.

She gazed back, and bit her lip in wonder. "Five gods," she murmured softly. "It really is you. My lord dy Cazaril. I bid you welcome to my house." She held out her hand for him to kiss.

He swallowed, almost gasping, and bent his head over it. Once, it had been fine and white, the nails perfect and pearl-rubbed. Now the knuckles stood out, and the thin skin was brown-spotted, though the nails were still as well kept as when she'd been a matron in her prime. She did not, by the smallest jerk, react to the couple of tears he dropped helplessly upon its back, but her lips curved up a little. Her hand drifted from his light grasp to touch his beard and trace one of the gray streaks. "Dear me, Cazaril, have I grown that old?"

He blinked rapidly up at her. He would not, he would not break down weeping like an overwrought child... "It has been a long time, Your Grace."

"Tsk." Her hand turned, and the dry fingers tapped him on the cheek. "That was your cue to say I haven't changed a bit. Didn't I teach you how to lie to a lady better than that? I had no idea I was so remiss." With perfect composure, she retrieved her hand and nodded to her companion.

"May I make you known to my cousin, the Lady dy Hueltar. Tessa, may I present my lord the Castillar dy Cazaril."

From the corner of his eye Cazaril saw the warder, with a breath of relief, relax his guard, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe. Still on his knee, Cazaril made a clumsy bow in the dedicat's direction.

"You are all kindness, Your Grace, but as I no longer hold Cazaril, nor its keep, nor any of my father's lands, I do not claim his title either."

"Don't be foolish, Castillar." Beneath her bantering tone, her voice sharpened. "My dear Provincar is dead these ten years, but I'll see the Bastard's demons eat the first man who dares to call me anything less than Provincara. We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter."

Beside her, the dedicat stiffened in disapproval of these blunt words, if not, perhaps, of the sentiment behind them. Cazaril judged it imprudent to point out that the title by right now belonged to the Provincara's daughter-in-law. Her son the present provincar and his wife likely judged it imprudent, too.

"You will always be the great lady to me, Your Grace, whom we worshipped from afar," Cazaril offered.

"Better," she approved judiciously. "Much better. I do like a man who can pull his wits about him." She waved at her warder. "Dy Ferrej, fetch the castillar a chair. One for yourself, too; you loom like a crow there."

The warder, apparently accustomed to such addresses, smiled and murmured, "Certainly, Your Grace." He pulled up a carved chair for Cazaril, with a gratifying murmur of Will my lord be seated? , and retrieved another for himself from the next chamber, placing it a little apart from his lady and her guest.

Cazaril scrambled up and sank down again in blessed comfort. He ventured tentatively, "Was that the royse and royesse I saw come in from riding as I arrived, Your Grace? I should not have troubled you with my intrusion, had I known you had such visitors." He would not have dared.

"Not visiting, Castillar. They are living here with me for now. Valenda is a quiet, clean town, and... my daughter is not entirely well. It suits her to retire here, after the too-hectic court." A weary look flickered in her eyes.

Five gods, the Lady Ista was here as well? The Dowager Royina Ista, Cazaril hastily corrected this thought. When he had first come to serve Baocia, as unformed a larva as any boy of like degree, the Provincara's youngest daughter Ista had seemed already a grown woman, though only a few years older than himself. Fortunately, even at that foolish age, he'd not been so foolish as to confide his hopeless infatuation of her to anyone else. Her high marriage soon after to Roya Ias himself—her first, his second—-had seemed her beauty's proper destiny, despite the royal couple's disparity of age. Cazaril supposed Ista's early widowhood might have been expected, though not as early as it had proved.

The Provincara brushed aside her fatigue with an impatient flash of her fingers, and followed with a, "And what of yourself? The last I heard of you, you were riding courier for the provincar of Guarida."