Lois Bujold - The Curse of Chalion

Palli's lips screwed up. "How can you tell?"

"I just can."

"Well, I can't."

"Wait, I know. Before you go to sleep tonight, pray for guidance."

"Me? Why don't you?"

"My nights are... full."

"And since when did you believe in prophetic dreams? I thought you always claimed it was nonsense, people fooling themselves, or pretending to an importance they could otherwise never claim."

"It's a... recent conversion. Look, Palli. Just do it for, for the experiment. To please me, if you will."

Palli made a surrendering gesture. "For you, yes. For the rest of it..." His black brows lowered. "Ibra... ? Just who would I be riding in secret from?"

"Dy Jironal. Mostly."

"Oh? Dy Yarrin might be interested in that. Something in it for him?"

"Not in any direct way, I don't think." Cazaril added reluctantly, "And likewise secret from Orico."

Palli sat back, his head tilting. His voice lowered. "Coy, Caz. Just what kind of noose are you offering to put round my neck, here? Is this treason?"

"Worse," Cazaril sighed. "Theology."

"Eh?"

"Oh, that reminds me." Cazaril pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to decide if his headache was getting worse. "Tell dy Yarrin his councils are being reported by some spy to dy Jironal. Though he may be canny enough to realize it already, I don't know."

"Worse and worse. Are you getting enough sleep, Caz?"

A bark of bitter laughter broke from Cazaril's lips. "No."

"You always did go strangely fey when you were overtired, y'know. Well, I'm not riding anywhere on the basis of a bunch of dark hints."

"In the event, you'd be given full knowledge."

"When I am given full knowledge, then I'll decide."

"Fair enough," Cazaril sighed. "I will discuss it with the royesse. But I didn't want to propose to her a man who would fail her."

"Hey!" said Palli indignantly. "When have I failed?"

"Never, Palli. That's why I thought of you." Cazaril grinned and, with a little grunt of pain, pushed to his feet. "I must return to the Zangre." Briefly, he described the unpleasant progression of Teidez's claw mark.

Palli's face grew very sober indeed. "Just how bad is it?"

"I don't..." Caution tempered Cazaril's frankness. "Teidez is young, strong, well fed. I see no reason why he cannot throw off this infection."

"Five gods, Caz, he's the hope of his House. What will Chalion do if he doesn't? And Orico laid low as well!"

Cazaril hesitated. "Orico... hasn't been well for some time, but I'm sure dy Jironal never imagined them both becoming so sick at once. You might note to dy Yarrin that our dear chancellor is going to be fairly distracted for the next few days. If the lord dedicats want to get past him to Orico's bed and get anything signed, now might be their best chance."

He extracted himself from Palli's cascade of second thoughts, although not from Palli's insistence that he take the dy Gura brothers for escort. Climbing the hill once more, his circling calculations of how to effect Iselle's escape from the wreck of her cursed House spiraled inward on a much simpler grim determination not to fall down in front of these earnest young men, to be hauled home stumbling with his arms across their shoulders.

CAZARIL FOUND THE THIRD-FLOOR CORRIDOR OF THE main block promisingly crowded upon his return. Green-robed physicians and their acolyte assistants scurried in and out. Servants hurried with water, linens, blankets, strange drinks in silver ewers. As Cazaril lingered, wondering what assistance he might offer, the archdivine emerged from the antechamber and started down the corridor, his face set and introspective.

"Your Reverence?" Cazaril touched his five-colored sleeve in passing. "How goes the boy?"

"Ah, Lord Cazaril." Mendenal turned aside briefly. "The chancellor and the royesse have given me purses for prayers on his behalf. I go to set them in motion."

"Do you think... prayers will do any good?" Do you think any prayers will do good?

"Prayer is always good."

No, it's not , Cazaril wanted to reply, but held his tongue.

Mendenal added suggestively, lowering his voice, "Yours might be especially efficacious. At this time."

Not so far as Cazaril had noticed. "Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him."

"Ah," said Mendenal uneasily. He managed a smile, and took polite leave.

Royesse Iselle stepped into the corridor and glanced up and down it. She spied Cazaril and motioned him to her.

He bowed. "Royesse?"

She, too, lowered her voice; everyone here seemed to speak in hushed tones. "There is talk of an amputation. Can you—would you be willing—to help hold him down, if it chances so? I think you are familiar with the procedure?"

"Indeed, Royesse." Cazaril swallowed. Nightmare memories of bad moments in field hospitals flitted through his mind. He had never been able to decide if the men who tried to take it bravely or the men whose minds broke in terror were the hardest for their helpers to endure. Better by far the men who were unconscious to start with. "Tell the physicians I am at their service, and Lord Teidez's."

Cazaril could hear from the antechamber where he leaned against the wall to wait just when the proposal was floated to Teidez. The boy was going to be of the second category, it seemed. He cried, and bellowed that he would not be made a cripple by traitors and idiots, and threw things. His rising hysteria was only calmed when a second physician opined that the infection was not gangrene after all—Cazaril's nose agreed—but rather, blood poisoning, and that amputation would do more harm than good now. Treatment was reduced to a mere lancing, although from Teidez's yells and struggles it might as well have been an amputation. Despite the draining of the wound, Teidez's fever soared; servants brought buckets of cold water to make him a bath in a copper tub in the sitting room, then the physicians had to wrestle him into it.

Between physicians, acolytes, and servants, they seemed to have enough hands for these practical tasks, and Cazaril withdrew for a time to his own office on the floor above. There he diverted his mind by writing tart letters to those town councils late with their royally mandated payments to the royesse's household, which was all of them. They had sent letters of excuse claiming poor crops, banditry, plague, evil weather, and cheating tax gatherers. Six towns' worth of troubles; Cazaril wondered if Orico had pulled a fast one with his betrothal gift and dumped the six worst towns on his rent rolls onto his sister and Dondo, or whether all of Chalion was in such disarray.

Iselle and Betriz came in, looking weary and strained.

"My brother is more ill than I have ever seen him," Iselle confided to Cazaril. "We are going to set up my private altar and pray before dinner. I'm wondering if we should perhaps fast as well."

"I think what may be needed here are not others' prayers, but Teidez's himself; and not for health, but for forgiveness."

Iselle shook her head. "He refuses to pray at all. He says it's not his fault, but Dondo's, which is certainly true up to a point... . He cries he never intended to hurt Orico, and they are slanderers who say so."

"Is anyone saying so?"

Betriz put in, "No one says it to the royesse's face. But there are strange rumors among the servants, Nan says."

Iselle's frown deepened. "Cazaril... could it be?"

Cazaril leaned his elbows on his table and rubbed the ache between his brows. "I think... not on Teidez's part. I believe him when he says it was Dondo's idea. Dondo, now, of him I would believe anything. Think it through from his point of view. He marries Teidez's sister, then arranges for Teidez to ascend the throne while still a minor. He knew from watching his brother Martou just how much power a man may wield sitting in a roya's pocket. Grant you, I don't know how he intended to rid himself of Martou, but I am certain Dondo meant to be the next chancellor, perhaps regent, of Chalion. Maybe even roya of Chalion, depending on what evil chances he could arrange for Teidez."